Kashi-sensei
by Eirian Erisdar
Summary: Kakashi falls to the Chibi no Jutsu, reverting his body and mind to an eighteen-month-old child's. But apparently, in this form, he can solve a great many problems in the shinobi world. Humour, angst, revelations, and featuring Hatake Sakumo, Namikaze Minato, and Uchiha Itachi. Set between the time when Kakashi takes over his team again from Yamato and the hunt for the Akatsuki.
1. Pint-sized Jounin

**After seeing all those baby fics about small Naruto, I came up with a funny idea about switching it around. Baby Kakashi should be cute. I've changed the timeline slightly so when Kakashi takes over Team Kakashi from Yamato after he recovers, there is some time before Asuma and Hidan and all that. So, Naruto doesn't know the Rasenshuriken yet, but given he hasn't got Sage Mode yet either, it doesn't matter anyway. This also shows my determination to write a better Naruto fic after the chaos of my first one (edit: I've deleted that one now, so any Naruto fics on my page now are actual good ones). This, on the other hand, is completely different. Enjoy the angst, crack, and lyricalness.**

(:~:)

The velvet sky whirls overhead as Night spins her cloak around Polaris, the sharp light of the stars gems on her sable fabric and the Milky Way the blued mist of her chakra dancing about her, matching her steps. The fluted tones of the wind are her melody, and the chirping of nightingales the rhythm of her movements. There is no moon, for the moon is laughing in its shadowed form with the sun on the far side of the world. Night twirls as starlight flows down from her opened arms, embracing those asleep below. And perhaps it is a gentle afterthought, for one who is dappled in the silver and sable shadows under the branching leaves, when Night breathes a brighter ray of starlight to illuminate Kakashi in the brilliance of uncounted diamonds above. He shifts in the bright luminance, instinctively seeking the darkness under the shadowed eaves of the wooden house.

A small snort escapes him as he lets his thoughts wander to the events a few hours earlier. Tenzo – _no, Yamato now_ – had outdone himself, growing a two-storey wooden lodge out of bare earth and then ringing warning tags around it. His former subordinate had then proceeded to say with a hint of smugness, _"We'll camp out here tonight. There's no point in continuing for Konoha until tomorrow."_ Kakashi hadn't bothered to mention that this hardly qualified as camping out. Actually, he must have been feeling soft, because he had agreed to taking the first watch without any further comment when Yamato, Naruto, and Sakura had subtly suggested it – well, not _so_ subtly on Naruto's part – and Sai had stayed silent, as expected. So, for now, his single visible eye flits over the surrounding forest, searching for disruptions in emerald-tinged darkness.

A disturbance in the air, no more than a breath of wind caressing sable.

Kakashi remains sitting where he is on the roof of the house, his breathing as slow and steady as ever, so as not to alert whatever or _whoever_ made that sound to his sudden alertness. Slowly, he shifts his hand to press against the rough surface of wood by his side, tapping out a silent rhythm on the hidden chakra channels in the ringed grain. A moment later, Yamato has woken from his slight slumber within, and tapped a return message with sure fingers. _"Message received, senpai. I will keep watch in your place."_

There is a moment of perfect silence.

And then Kakashi is gone from his place in a blur, a white-tipped arrow flying toward the source of the disturbance.

He wouldn't admit it to anyone – above all, _Gai_ – but Kakashi loves sprinting. The rush of adrenaline as the wind catches his unruly hair and throws it out behind him in a spiky pennant of silver; the soundless rhythm of his pace; his calm, steady heartbeat as he speeds toward her destination, feeling as though he is a stone skipping across water. Sometimes, when he is backed by a tailwind, the air before him parts like water, and to Kakashi, it is as if he strides tip-toed on the border between two exquisite worlds of wind, frozen in a timeless dimension of utter solitude.

Perhaps it is because in this existence without time, Kakashi can outrun the hauntings of his memories.

Kakashi grits his teeth and pushes these melancholy thoughts from his mind.

He comes to an unhurried halt just by the edge of the clearing, and immediately tenses. Kakashi had hoped that the movement had simply been a curious fox or some other nocturnal animal, but the metallic tang of chakra in the air tells otherwise to his sensitive nose. The liquid darkness between the trees seems to hold infinite possibilities, any number of opponents. Better if he returned to the lodge to wake the others before venturing out into what would, Kakashi realises, definitely become a battle. He shifts his weight to pivot, preparing to leap back he way he came–

A glimmer in his peripheral vision, starlight glinting off a hitai-ate not his own.

With remarkable agility, his left hand flicks twin shuriken at the shilhouette even as he leans backwards, watching the momentary reflection of his eye in the strangely-shaped kunai as it whistles over his head. Rather predictably, the kunai is followed by six fully-armed shinobi darting out at him from the shadows, two ahead, two attempting to flank him and the remainder hurling themselves out of a tree directly above.

Kakashi pushes up the edge of his hitai-ate, sharingan blazing with ruby intensity. One of the idiots running toward him barely evades the deadly four-pointed metallic star and it carves a line of scarlet in his cheek. The other chunin – he moves far too slowly to be a jounin – gives a strangled _gurk_ as Kakashi's shuriken embeds itself into his neck, and he falls into a pool of his own blood as the metal edges sever his spinal cord , ending his existence before he can open his mouth to curse past the liquid in his throat.

Kakashi flips forwards past him, using the two flanking shinobi's momentum against them as he slips past and draws a kunai across the jugular of the shinobi with the cut on his cheek, wincing at the warm spray of crimson that follows. Halfway through the motion, he releases the kunai and presses his hands into the wet grass, transferring his weight onto them and releasing a concentrated burst of chakra from his feet, adding extra power to the twin kicks that connect with the chins of the falling shinobi above. _Never jump down on a target,_ he thinks. It had been one of the first things Minato-sensei had taught him. _You won't be able to dodge whatever comes below._ The full force of Kakashi's attack is doubled by the two shinobi's own body weight. Rather conveniently, the kunai in the falling shinobi's hands stab their comrades on the way down.

Six bodies slump to the ground like mannequins as Kakashi completes his flip just into the edge of the forest and straightens, his sharingan staring at the darkness before him. His eyes widen as he sees the flare of chakra-laden strings attached to the bodies around him tighten, and the chakra-system of another shinobi, far more powerful than the six he has just defeated flicker into existence. Kakashi bites back a curse. The shinobi must have stayed back, far from the reaches of the sharingan, and then darted forward just as his six companions launched a distraction. The figure raises his hands, and Kakashi sees his hands flash in an insanely complicated sequence of seals. He prepares to dodge, even as his sharingan reads the jutsu, understanding dawning in the back of his mind in an instant. This jutsu is an ingenious combination of memory-wiping and reverse-henge, yielding unknown results should Kakashi be hit with it. As he reverses his flip with grace borne of years of practice, one of the corpses by his feet raises a chakra-string-controlled hand and snags his ankle.

The jutsu slams across his chest in a blast of warmth. In the blinding glare of white light, he dimly sees trees explode out of the ground and sharpen into innumerable spears, turning the enemy nin into a human pincushion as Kakashi opens his mouth in vain to tell Yamato to spare the jutsu caster. He struggles to oppose whatever the jutsu is doing to him.

And then the back of his head slams into the ground and the starlight fades into ebony.

(:~:)

"What happened?!" Naruto yells at Sakura as they leap out the window of the lodge, a few steps behind Yamato's form as he speeds towards the edge of the clearing. Sai cocks his head as he follows a few seconds behind, as if sensing something different about the air.

"I don't know! How would you expect me to?" Sakura retorts, shaking sleep from her mind. They had all been violently awoken by Yamato's shout of _"No, senpai!"_ and smoothly leapt out of the window as they saw him slam a palm to the ground, grinding noises showing the progress of his jutsu in the trees just beyond.

Putting on another burst of speed, Naruto skids to a stop by Yamato, who crouches in the middle of carnage. Naruto's cerulean eyes widen. Six shinobi, probably killed in the same number of seconds, judging by the wounds. Kakashi-sensei's handiwork.

"Where is he?" Sakura's words are hushed.

The answer presents itself in a shuffling directly ahead. Three kunai appear in three hands, and the sloshing of ink in Sai's scroll sounds from behind Naruto.

A small, silver-haired head above a perfect little set of miniaturised jounin uniform emerges from liquid sable into the incandescent starlight of the clearing.

Naruto blinks. He reaches up to rub his eyes, and then blinks again. "What?" he splutters. _I must be dreaming._

A seemingly uninjured Kakashi stares uncomprehendingly up at three equally stunned faces, and Sai's raised eyebrow. His mind is somewhat jumbled as old and new memories mix together into a chaotic mess, so he can't place these shinobi, but something deep within him clicks when his wandering gaze flits over the blond head above.

Eighteen-month-old Hatake Kakashi launches himself forward and attaches himself to Naruto's violently orange pant leg, digging his face into the knee. As Naruto steps back, reeling from shock, Kakashi mumbles happily, "Mina'o sen…sei."

And then the mess of a child promptly falls asleep.

Yamato runs a hand through his hair tiredly as he watches his senpai snuggle further into Naruto, clinging to his leg like some sort of spiky-haired koala. "You've got to be kidding me," he sighs. Sai stares at Kakashi, an expression of utmost curiosity etched onto his face.

Into the contemplative silence afterwards, Naruto finally manages to find his voice. "Oh crap," he mutters.

Sakura doesn't have the energy to hit him. And anyway, that pretty much sums up the situation. "So…should we take him to Tsunade-sishou?" she says uncertainly.

(:~:)

**This is just a prologue. I usually write MUCH longer chapters. Once my mock exams finish I should be able to update quite fast. I type fast, after all. What do you think? Do you think this will work? Those people who reviewed A Father's Last Words, I'm sorry I haven't been able to get back to you, because I had university interviews, but I WILL reply to all reviews this time. Reviews are moonlight spun with blue chakra, so please? See you all in a while!**


	2. Silver hedgehog on sugar

**I finished my mocks yesterday, so I bequeath unto thee my newest chapter. Hope you like it. Genma's not going to like this XD**

(:~:)

"YAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

A half-sob. "Ple…ase…senpai…just…hold still…"

"Yamato-taichou, I can't conduct this medical examination unless Kakashi-sensei remains unmoving."

Contemplation. "Should I pin the child's clothing down with kunai?"

"_No_, Sai."

A shriek, from small lungs designed for maximum volume. "Leggo o' me!"

"JUST LET _ME_ HOLD HIM, DATTEBAYO!"

…

"That worked well."

(:~:)

Results of preliminary medical examination:

Examination conducted by: Senju Yamato, Haruno Sakura

Subject: Hatake Kakashi (small)

Points to note:

Subject appears to have reverted to the approximate age of eighteen months. However, retains sharingan eye and scar. Memories remain partially intact, and the subject's current confusion may result from the young brain's inability to process this large influx of information in such a short period of time. Consequently, communication is garbled, often unintelligible – subject mixes early memories with later ones. Other than the obvious physical and mental change, subject, in all terms of the word, appears perfectly healthy.

Extra point of interest:

Subject is unnaturally attached to Uzumaki Naruto (see Konoha bingo book, page 324)

(:~:)

Kakashi was a perfect bundle of joy all long, _long_ journey back to Konoha. Within the space of a day, he had somehow managed to spill porridge all over Sai's pristine uniform, tangled Sakura's hair with fingers far too deft for a toddler, steal kunai, and generally run about like a hyperactive white hedgehog on caffeine. To top it all, he had blatantly refused to be carried by anyone other than Naruto, who, incidentally, is currently the only one to have escaped unscathed from Kakashi's antics.

Even Yamato's patience is wearing thin. So, while taking a short break by the side of a stream, he decides to capture Kakashi's attention, and perhaps, _just_ perhaps, stop his lightning speed. "Kakashi!" Yamato calls, musing over how his senpai's affinity for the lightning element might have to do with just how much energy he seems to have at one and a half years of age. "Come over here for a moment."

Kakashi pauses in his chase of a squirrel, hands holding the squirming ball of fur tightly to his mini flak jacket, and cocks his small silver head to listen. Slowly, the single wide dark eye wanders over to meet the slightly desperate gaze of the other person in the clearing. "No." Kakashi says shortly, in an utterly adorable impersonation of his exact reaction to the same question when he and Yamato were in ANBU. Only that now, he probably has no idea why he is doing so.

Yamato rubs his face tiredly. Sai had murmured something about washing his porridge-covered clothes and headed towards the stream, and Yamato spies the pink of Sakura's hair a few paces into the forest, where she keeps watch. Naruto is now catching up on some much-needed sleep in the tree above, the only place out of reach of the hyperactive child below. Kakashi had alternated between recognising him as Naruto and calling him "Mina'o-sensei" fondly. Naruto had been too tired to question the reason behind this, much to Yamto's relief.

He decides to change tack, recalling a far-distant memory from his younger days when the Yondaime was still alive. Something about the Hokage ruffling Kakashi-senpai's hair and calling him _'Kashi-kun' _just to spite him. Hestiantly, Yamato begins. "Kashi-kun? Do you know who I am?" he murmurs gently, forcing a smile.

Now that gets a reaction. At the name, Kakashi adjusts his chubby fingers' grip on the poor squirrel, appears to think this over, and stops, unsure. He doesn't quite know what to make of the friendly brown-haired face rimmed with metal. Something nags at the back of his mind, something that is a mix of respect and uncontrollable laughter.

"I'm Yamato. I'm older than you, so call me Yamato-san, okay?" Wood-man – as Kakashi spontaneously names him – says gently. His eyes glimmer with an emotion Kakashi takes a moment to place. Mischief.

And then something fits into place in the maelstrom of confused thoughts in Kakashi's brain. Without understanding his own words, he says slowly, "Nooooo, y…you…" Suddenly, he grins, creasing the fabric of his mask with glee. "Tenzo no baka!" he declares triumphantly, waving the squirrel above his head like a trophy of victory.

When _Tenzo_ folds over silently to press his face into the grass, Kakashi frowns. Did he do something? Better to wake him up. Letting the squirrel – very much relieved – go, Kakashi silently toddles over. But his steps are as quiet as ever, his instincts telling him to move low to the ground and avoid the rustle of leaves. When the wood-man's head is level with his knees, Kakashi reaches slowly into his pocket, withdrawing a small water bomb.

When Team Kakashi had tried to assess the situation the night before, they had relieved the toddler of his tiny weapons, which had been miniaturised along with his uniform. What they couldn't possibly have known, of course, was that adult Kakashi had been waiting for Yamato to change shifts with a strange sort of glee at the water bomb he had in his pocket.

Bad luck for Yamato.

Frowning in concentration, Kakashi holds the water bomb with both hands above Yamato's mousy brown hair, and taps into the energy within himself. He doesn't know what it is, or why he has it, but he follows the tingling in his mind to allow the energy – _chakra,_ he remembers now – to flow from his heart, down his arm, through his fingers and into the water bomb. And then he flips backwards in an astonishing display of gymnastics for a toddler and settles down to watch happily as Yamato is enveloped in a small tsunami of summoned water.

The water shakes the tree with its force. Naruto rolls over in his sleep up on a high branch, and finds nothing beneath him. The next moment, the groggy blonde slams into the ground, but courtesy to the amazing depth of his slumber, just mumbles a bit and sleeps on. Kakashi slowly pushes himself up, balancing his weight on his small feet, and when he is confident, leaps up and cannonballs onto Yamato's chest, using the poor man as a springboard to get to Naruto. Kakashi yawns and rubs his eye. Nap time, he decides.

Sakura returns from her watch to find a half-drowned Yamato coughing up water and flinging ripe curses at his senpai, Naruto spread-eagled on his back, drooling in his sleep, and a tiny white-haired child curled into Naruto's side, his smile invisible but his single eye closed. He gives little piffling sounds in his dreams.

"He's just a child." Sakura punches a tree, turns around, and decides to prolong her watch. She wouldn't admit it, but she really needs Ino right now. Men_ really_ don't know how to deal with situations like this.

(:~:)

The bright, warm rays of the sun shine sickeningly sweetly on the sorry sight of a five-man cell that troops into Konoha the next morning. Given their arrival is a day later than expected, Izumo shakes himself from his doze and opens his mouth to ask the reason for their apparent tardiness.

The words die on his lips as he observes, _really_ observes, the scene. His hand moves of its own accord, slapping his partner in the face to wake him up. "Oi, oi, Kotetsu. Wake up," he hisses, his eyes ever leaving the group of people before him.

A muffled groan sounds from the chair beside him. "Whut…" Kotetsu mumbles, blinking at the sunlight. Then his jaw, too, drops.

Yamato, Sakura, and Sai look the same as ever. Perhaps a little tired, and sporting the usual array of wounds from a mission. They would probably only need to be hospitalised for a day. Naruto, however, barely stays on his feet, staggering about drunkenly. His exhaustion is evident in the shadows under his eyes. But it is the last member of the five-man cell that has Izumo, and now Kotetsu, gaping in shock.

Naruto seems to be wearing a small, spiky silver hat. Hatake Kakashi, copy-nin of Konoha, legend in ANBU and hero of the Third Shinobi war, snuggles further into the blond spikes of Naruto's hair, short arms wrapped securely around the poor boy's head and his weight settled comfortably on Naruto's shoulders. His sandaled feet bounce gently against Naruto's chest.

"Wel-welcome back, Naruto," Izumo finally manages to splutter. "Is that child…?"

"Don't ask," Sakura replies half-heartedly. "You don't want to know the details. We're taking him to Tsunade-shishou."

The conversation rouses Kakashi from his slumber, and he opens one tiny eye, yawning silently through his tiny mask. He catches sight of a gobsmacked Izumo and Kotetsu and raises a chubby cut-off-gloved hand to wish them "O'aiyo!" he squeaks, and as Naruto continues forward, turns his white-haired head to yell, "Ja ne!" Izumo and Kotetsu each raise a shaking hand in farewell, looking as if they desperately need coffee.

Greetings done, Kakashi settles back onto Naruto's head, folding his hands on top of the soft gold and resting his chin on them. His right eye grows wider and wider. Something about these buildings, these streets, strikes a deep chord within him. _He is home._ "Ta..da…imaaaa!" he mumbles into Naruto's hair happily.

Yamato hears the muffled words, and winces. With some luck, they should at least make it to the Hokage tower before anyone notices the child on Naruto's shoulders is dressed in the perfect, if not tiny, uniform of a jounin.

Of course, that doesn't happen.

A small "Sugoi!" sounds from behind Naruto's head. He flicks his tired panda eyes upwards, and asks tiredly, "Wha–"

Kakashi grabs Naruto's ears and jerks his head towards the left. Amidst Naruto's shout of pain, Kakashi seems entirely comfortable with his now bucking ride as Naruto's feet continue on for a step or two before following the direction of his head. As Naruto finally regains his balance, ears burning like hot-irons and tears starting in his eyes, slender, short fingers enter his peripheral vision and points at the food stall beside them.

_Grilled saury on sticks?_

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto begins, "couldn't we wait until– ARGH!"

That was in response to a whack on the head reminiscent of elder Kakashi's usual beratings of _"Naruto!"_ Not that he would say that now, of course.

"Can I help either of you?" the shopkeeper smiles gently. _What an adorable pair of brothers,_ he thinks.

"One stick of–" A sharp heel-kick on his chest. He coughs. Two fingers appear on both sides of his vision, waving impatiently. "Two sticks of grilled saury, please," he half-groans. Kakashi congratulates his student for listening by ruffling his golden hair roughly, smiling at the feeling of knots catching between his fingers as he does so. Sakura hurries over to pay when she sees Naruto sway dangerously, tears now running down his face.

"Well, at least now we know Kakashi-sensei seems to mix his past and present personalities," she says brightly, handing Naruto the food. Naruto's bleak gaze looks at her pleadingly. "Sorry," she winces. Naruto holds one stick up to Kakashi's mouth, no longer caring that sauce and bits of fish rain down on him from above. Kakashi grabs the stick with one hand and pulls down his mask with the other before attacking the fish greedily, a look of utter joy on his features.

There is a moment of awed silence as three pairs of eyes widen. Naruto's cerulean orbs widen as well, before he says in a panic, "He's eating…his mask is off! But I can't see him!" Naruto tries to maneuver Kakashi off his shoulders, but a sauce-covered hand smacks into his face, giving him a perfect imprint of a chubby hand on the whisker-markings on his cheek.

Sai flips open a spare scroll and retreats backwards, brush flying in insanely fast strokes as he draws Kakashi's face. "Hmm," Sakura mutters, circling Kakashi curiously. "He looks pretty much like most babies do, though. Except for the scar."

"No matter." Sai's voice surprises the others. "I will draw him as accurately as possible," the dark-haired boy murmurs. "There is software we can use to predict what Kakashi-senpai's face looks like as an adult."

Hope unlooked-for glints in Naruto's eyes. "Great! Why're you doing his, Sai?"

"I read that friends should help each other's interests," Sai replies, his eyes flicking from scroll to subject. "This has been a perusal of yours for some years, has it not?"

"Thank you, Sai!" Naruto beams through a hail of fish. A small hand gropes for the next stick.

Yamato turns away. He finds himself far too enraptured by his senpai attacking food than he should be.

As they approach the Hokage Tower, Kakashi nibbles the sticks clean, fingering their sharp points curiously. And then, inevitably, his sharp eye catches sight of something.

Asuma lounges by the entrance to the Hokage Tower, puffing contentedly on a cigarette as he talks animatedly to Kurenai. Now, Kakashi at a young age is Kakashi nonetheless, so, a single word immediately pops into his mind. _Victims._ So, unbeknownst to either of them, Kakashi raises both sticks, lines up his shot, and flicks them like bamboo senbon towards the pair by the wall.

THWAP.

Asuma's cigarette is torn out of his fingers, pinned to the wall by two quivering bamboo sticks. Both him and Kurenai spin, defensive positions ready, at the source of the attack, but are instead faced with a giggling, masked, white haired child waving at them proudly from behind Naruto's neck. "As'ma! Ku'enai!" He squeals loudly.

"Yo, Asuma-sensei," Naruto coughs as he passes. "Don't ask."

The lighter falls from Asuma's fingers and echoes hollowly as it hits the dirt by his feet.

(:~:)

Tsunade pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers, fighting a bizarre urge to laugh. In face, she would have, if not for the cons of losing such a versatile jounin in a time when Konoha is so short-handed. The laugh builds up within her chest and transforms. "Can any one of you explain," she bellows, commanding voice lancing towards her victims, "when peace hangs on but a thread, _exactly why_ I have to spend my time ORGANSISING THE UNBABIFICATION OF ONE OF MY BEST JOUNIN?!"

Beside Tsunade, Shizune shudders slightly and hugs Tonton tighter to her chest.

"_Unbabification_? Is that a word?" Naruto whispers to Sakura, only to be floored by Sakura's fist and Tsunade's next shriek all at once.

"YOU!"

"Ye-s, Tsunade no Ba – Hokage-sama?" Naruto barely catches himself in time to avoid another flood of pain, one in his eardrums and the other on top of his fish-sauce-covered head. Kakashi giggles – yes, _giggles_ – in his arms, reaching for Tsunade eagerly. "Baaaa-chaaaan!" he squeals, drawing out the vowels in exquisite irony, and then proceeds to kick off Naruto's stomach (_ooof!_) catching the side of Tsunade's desk with a surprisingly firm grip. His tiny feet sway gently a few inches off the floor.

As predicted, Tsunade slams a fist onto the table, covering her eyes with her other hand as she struggles to bring her simmering anger down to a level with which she wouldn't smash anything her chakra-laced fingers touch. Kakashi yelps slightly as the shockwave from the strike shakes the fragile wood, but swings agilely along with the motion and gets his ankle onto the surface of the desk. His trailing leg scrapes soundlessly on the smooth grain of the side of the desk, and with a huff of effort, he pulls himself with trembling little limbs onto the tabletop, panting with the effort as he presses his hands to his knees. And then he flashes a huge grin that explodes with so much pride that it shines through his mask.

Naruto opens his mouth to say something, but Yamato cuts him off with a gesture.

Tsunade feels a soft gloved hand come to rest on top of her closed fist. She looks up and is almost blinded by tufts of silver hair as Kakashi peers into her face with a worried look inscribed on his rounded features. "You...'kay?" the small voice inquires. Something appears to melt inside Tsunade's liquid brown eyes. Kakashi had been her first confidant when first she took office three years ago.

"Yes, I'm fine," she replies, smiling down at the adorable little boy kneeling before her, whose eye curves in a grin of relief. "But," Tsunade continues, enveloping the tiny hand in hers, "we need to do something about you…but your team needs to go to the hospital," she muses. There is something so…fragile about the hand she cradles in hers, scars from years of war wiped away by youth.

Without further preamble, she glances behind her to the wide windows of the Hokage tower, and yells, "Genma!"

A lithe form vaults in an open window, lands with predatory grace beside Naruto, and pivots into a seamless bow. As Genma straightens, the ever-present senbon is shifted to the side by a wily smirk. "I'm glad you called, Hokage-sama. I was getting impatient waiting outside," he drawls. "I wanted to see Kakashi–" He catches sight of the silver-haired toddler staring curiously right back at him and his shoulders immediately start shaking with laughter.

Tsunade raises an eyebrow at her bodyguard's unnatural explosion of mirth. "Well," she says in a businesslike voice, "Until we can find Jiraiya, or Naruto and the others are released from hospital, we need an experienced jounin to take care of Kakashi-chibi here."

Genma's chuckles continue for a full ten seconds before the words sink in. Immediately, his expression changes to one appropriate for the funeral of a close friend. "What?" he stammers. He catches himself before his mouth hangs open wide enough for his senbon to tumble out. "You can't possibly–"

Tsunade catches Kakashi under the armpits and flings him at Genma, ignoring Kakashi's burble of exhilaration. "Hold that."

" 'eiyo!" Kakashi mumbles happily. "You…Gen?"

Naruto winces in sympathy. Genma's hands tremble as he holds the little white-haired monstrosity as far away from him as possible. "He recognises me," he says, surprised.

"Preliminary medical report," Yamato sighs, stepping forward and handing Tsunade a folder. Genma is pretty sure Yamato also mutters something like, _"And he doesn't let me carry him…"_ but then Tsunade narrows her eyes as she peruses the short document and Genma turns back to her.

"So he mixes young and old memories…" she mutters to herself. "I believe I have a solution to this matter."

"_Yes?_" Naruto and Genma's hopeful cries ring out together.

"If Kakashi's memories are all intact," Tsunade says, folding her fingers into a steeple before her, "The effect on his mind appears to be only temporary. Then all we need to do is wait for his mind to finish…recalibrating, shall we say, ask him what hand signs the enemy nin used, and then undo the jutsu. Very interesting one, that. The jutsu is feeding off his chakra, but not so much that it can't sustain itself – You did gather intel on those responsible?" she directs at Yamato.

Yamato nods. "Here." He proffers a well-wrapped bundle. At a call from Tsunade, a backup medical-nin enters and takes the unpleasant piece of baggage away.

"Genma, you're dismissed," Tsunade waves a hand at him.

"But…Hokage-sama, what to I…"

"I don't know. Feed him. Read him bedtime stories. I don't care."

With the look of someone who has just been sent on a suicide mission, Genma turns to go, opening the door with some difficulty as Kakashi's weight rests in his arms. As they are halfway through the door, Kakashi turns and waves at Naruto, calling, "Bye-bye, Mina'o-sensei!"

Maybe it is a blessing that chibi-Kakashi is too fixated on Naruto's confused face to notice the sharp intake of breath that ruffles the top of his spiky hair, and how Genma's hold on him suddenly tightens. A moment later, they are gone.

A sigh. "Shizune, go after them and make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."

"Hai. Which one, Tsunade-sama?"

"Both of them."

In the rather empty silence of Shizune's wake, Naruto scratches his head and mutters, almost to himself, "Why does he call me that?"

Yamato gives a warning cough as Tsunade replies blandly, "Minato was his sensei, the Yondaime. You just look a bit like him, with your hair colour and all."

"Oh yeah," Sakura murmurs, cocking her head at Naruto. "Your eyes are the same colour as his as well," she comments, finger to her lips.

Sai opens his mouth to make an observation, only to be silenced by Yamato's warning glare. He continues to contemplate what he has seen, from Yamato's obvious – well, to an ANBU anyway – nervousness, Tsunade's roundabout way of answering the question, to Naruto's likeness to the Yondaime.

Sai comes to the obvious conclusion, improbable as it may be. But given that Yamato is giving him a rather pointed stare and the sudden rise in tension in the air, he decides to consult his books on social behavior before voicing his deduction.

Luckily enough, Naruto seems to accept Tsunade's explanation. Yamato stifles a rather obvious yawn behind his hand. Tsunade sighs again. "Go to the hospital, all of you," she mutters. "Report back here in the morning and we'll see what can be arranged about Kakashi."

The sorry troupe troops out of her office.

Tsunade massages her fingers into her forehead, trying to dispel a sudden migraine, and then grins as she snaps open a hidden compartment in her desk and withdraws her secret stash of sake.

(:~:)

Genma finds himself overwhelmed by alternating waves of terror and a strange sort of protectiveness as he steps into the blinding sunlight outside the Hokage tower. Kakashi is settled happily in his arms, reaching up to fiddle with the knot in Genma's bandanna. Genma flicks his senbon to the other side of his mouth so it won't poke Kakashi in the eye, and curses inwardly. He had let his emotions get the better of him when he heard his colleague – chibified as he is – call Naruto Minato.

Genma's teen years had been ones of exhilaration and danger, a strange sort of pride always there in his heart to be on the Yondaime's elite guard. But of course, none in their generation could hold a candle to Hatake Kakashi, Jounin at thirteen, hero of the Third Shinobi War and ANBU legend. Their group of friends had shrunk lately – Hayate had been taken suddenly, and Yuugao had thrown herself into work as if that could bring him back – but Kakashi had still been supporting all his friends, giving Raido dating advice, teasing Asuma and Kurenai, bickering with Anko and accepting Gai's insane challenges.

To see his friend as a child had been bad enough, no matter how comedic it was.

To see the innocence in his one dark eye had been jarring.

And speaking of their circle of friends…

Asuma and Kurenai approach Genma cautiously, as if worried that he might bite their heads off. Or maybe worried that _Kakashi_ would do that. "Is that who I think it is?" Asuma asks wonderingly. Kurenai hovers behind him, equally enthralled.

"Yeah," Genma half-groans. "Take a look. I don't think he'll bite."

Asuma leans in close to the tuft of silver hair and narrows his eyes. And then he whistles as he takes in Kakashi's curious gaze, followed by a wince as his cigarette smoke washes over the kid.

"_Cough! Cough!"_

Genma splutters as he finds his senbon suddenly yanked from between his teeth. The next moment, Asuma's cigarette is wrenched from his mouth. _Again._ Kakashi rolls his one visible eye and waves the senbon, with a cigarette neatly impaled on it, in front of Asuma's face once, as if to say, _'Don't smoke,'_ and then blinks as Genma begins to curse at the loss of his senbon.

Unbeknownst to Kakashi, Genma had a senbon for a _reason_. It was hollow, for one thing, so could hold a certain amount of liquid. The liquid in most shinobis' senbon would most likely be poison, but in Genma's case, it was usually some form of alcohol. That way, he could get away with drinking (slightly) at work. Today, he had filled the senbon, with no little glee, with a present from a friend, a particularly rare cognac. Of course, now all that precious golden liquid is being contaminated by nicotine and tar.

"You little-!" Genma hisses. He stops himself before his voice rises too much.

Unfortunately, that surprises Kakashi enough that the chubby fingers that hold Genma's senbon waver, and then let go.

Genma's horrified brown eyes are reflected for a moment in the unbroken, polished metal of the senbon as it sails past his shoulder toward the ground in a deadly vertical drop, trailing cigarette smoke as it ends its glorious flight by impaling itself in Genma's foot.

Genma's howl of agony frightens Kakashi so much that Kurenai rushes forward and envelops him in a motherly embrace while Asuma's mouth drops open at the sight of his friend's foot pinned to the ground by his own senbon. "Crud, mate," Asuma mutters as he crouches by Genma, who has two hands around his foot and the spreading pool of crimson. His face has gone a bleached white. Asuma winces, and says, "Should we pull that out, or-?"

"DON'T TOUCH IT!"

Kakashi shudders slightly at the scream, and worms his face into Kurenai's hair. Kurenai finds herself torn between concern for Genma and a desire to laugh at the two frantic men crouched low before her.

Hurried footsteps. A horrified voice washes over the scene, bringing images of terror with it.

_"OhmygoodnessGenmawhathaveyou donetoyourself-letmelookatthat!"_ Shizune's words, however rushed and worried they are, have an almost magical effect on Genma, halting his shivers instantly. His face changes from one of abject torture to one of bland nonchalance.

"Ah, no," he says in a perfectly even voice. "I'm fine–"

"Stop trying to act all manly," Kurenai admonishes. "Let her heal you."

Shizune is too intent on extracting the senbon to notice the flush across Genma's ears. Asuma, being a typical man, doesn't notice either. Kurenai smiles, and watches as Kakashi slides his head from around her shoulder to peer at the pair. If Kurenai isn't mistaken, a flash of recognition sparks in the sable eye, then vanishes just as quickly.

Genma hisses as the senbon leaves his sandal. "That stings."

"It shouldn't," Shizune mutters, furrowing her eyebrows. "It's a clean wound. Unless something was _in_ the senbon-"

Ah.

"Nah, it doesn't hurt anymore," Genma laughs sheepishly. Grimacing, he stands, his arm supported by Shizune.

"We need to get you home," she says, oblivious to his crimson face.

"It's not that far from here. I have to get Kakashi settled for the night anyway," Genma indicates the toddler curled into Kurenai's arms.

"We'll give you a hand," Asuma declares, slinging Genma's arm over his shoulders and taking Genma's weight off Shizune's hands. Genma seems to sag slightly at this. "Your foot's just been done in by this little akuma here, anyhow."

Kakashi bobs excitedly as the bustling world of Konoha opens up to him again. With the midday sun directly overhead, their shadows play with their feet, the indeterminable edge between sable and sun-baked yellow sharper than usual. The currents of the city of Konoha are alive, as if the people are leaves in water trickling laughingly about the streets, quickening down the boulevards and slowing alleyways jam-packed with stalls selling delicacies, dango to ramen to soba, a cacophony of sound that swirls around Kakashi in a whirlpool of colour, each voice a different shade. And among those voices, spikes of recognition he does not understand, iridescent nuances of colour – _chakra_ – that twirl faster, more chaotic and more controlled than the muted colours of civilians. Kakashi sees another layer of reality, other channels reserved solely for shinobi to sprint in formation or dance singularly over rooftops and in the darkest shadows between unknown walls, rapids in the otherwise meandering tributaries, carrying fallen leaves, shinobi, who glow emerald in the humming chakra of the city.

Kurenai notices how Kakashi grows still in her arms, but makes no trouble out of it. She is far more preoccupied with the gossiping whispers people send her way when they see the child. Whispers like, _"Young Sarutobi and hers? Isn't it a bit soon to dress him as a shinobi?"_ An unwanted blush flushes across her cheeks.

Kakashi finds he doesn't mind at all. In the ten minutes it takes to reach Genma's apartment, Kakashi has already discovered a perfect game to keep himself occupied. To his infinite amusement and no little confusion, in the many flares of chakra that he senses, there are always a few hidden on rooftops or behind cleverly concealed doors, having no job except to simply observe. Kakashi had narrowed his eye and just managed to catch the rim of a red and white mask slip behind a wall once, so within the next couple minutes, makes it his business to wave to every single hidden shinobi he senses.

The ANBU themselves are trained not to react abruptly to any situation, so many merely give a jolt of surprise at the thought that they were spotted, by a _child_ nonetheless. But for one particular captain who happened to once be on Kakashi's team, the shock of seeing _Dog_ of all people as a child in Yuuhi Kurenai's arms, waving energetically at him, sends a chill down to his bones. He wonders whether it is time for him to retire. If a child could spot him, then what on earth is he ANBU for? But then again, that child was _Dog_. And _Dog_ had never been normal, child or not.

(:~:)

At Genma's apartment, Shizune had set about bandaging his wounded foot properly while Asuma and Kurenai tried to child-proof the apartment. Kakashi would only be there a day, but still, Genma was a jounin-level shinobi bachelor. It took the better part of an hour to shove all the spare equipment into a corner, search the apartment for wayward kunai and set up a makeshift crib/area for Kakashi to stay in.

When the preparations are finally complete, Asuma triumphantly takes Kakashi from Kurenai, slips off his sandals while simultaneously stopping Kakashi's wriggling, and places him on the comfortable den of blankets.

Kakashi kicks the blankets experimentally with his foot. He breaks into a smile. "Sof'" he declares. "I wike." With a huff, he plonks down on the soft pile and wriggles into it.

"Can somebody tell me what he bleedin' just said?" Genma groans from the sofa.

"He says it's soft and he likes it," Kurenai replies, smiling fondly as the silver hedgehog burrows into the white sheets.

A rumble turns all heads to Genma. He grins apologetically, rubbing his stomach. "I didn't have breakfast," he admits. "I woke up late and had to run to guard duty." He scrabbles in the drawer beside him and finds a new senbon. He sticks it into his mouth tiredly.

"Genma!" Shizune growls. Genma straightens from his slouch, dark brown eyes nearly snapping to attention. "Don't you know better than that?" Shizune sighs. "It's almost time for lunch anyway. Let's get takeout."

Genma tilts his head, brown hair swaying about his chin. And then suddenly, his cocky smile flashes into being. "I've got a better idea." Standing stiffly, he hobbles over to the window and sticks his head out into the warm air. After a moment, his shoulders relax. "OI!" he hollers down to the street below. "Izumo! Kotetsu! Get up here! I've got a special mission for you!"

"He's not," Asuma chuckles.

"He is," Kurenai sighs.

The two unfortunate chunin knock on the door a minute later, only to have Genma whirl out to meet them, throw an arm over each of their shoulders and say sleazily, and much too fast for them to reply, "Hey, you don't have anything to do, right? Nothing? Good. Could you take care of Kakashi-chan here? Me and my fellow jounin have something incredibly important to take care of."

"Kakashi–" Izumo begins.

"–chan?" Kotetsu queries.

With supreme indifference, Genma ignores this and grabs Shizune's wrist. "Let's go, Asuma, Kurenai," he calls over his shoulder as he hobbles out. "Oh, and Izumo, Kotetsu, I owe you one, okay? Have fun."

As the door clicks shut with a strangely final sound, Izumo and Kotetsu stare down at the white-haired child that has just emerged from a mess of blankets. Izumo gives a low whistle. "So what we saw at the gate _was_ what we thought it was," he mutters.

Kotetsu crouches down to Kakashi's eye level, squinting at the two and a half-foot tall jounin. "Say, are you really Kakashi-san?"

Kakashi considers this for a minute, then crosses his arms and closes his eye, nodding once imperiously. "Imma Kashi," he declares proudly.

"I'm Izumo…and this is Kotetsu," Izumo replies cautiously. "Uh…I think we've met before, but I'm not sure whether you remember in this state…"

Kakashi just tilts his head and stares back at them with an unnaturally perceptive eye for an eighteen-month old toddler. "Tirty," he mumbles.

"Wha–"

"I think he's thirsty, Kotetsu."

"Oh." Sound of a refrigerator being opened. Rummaging. "Dude, what's safe for a kid that age to drink? All Genma-san's got in here is booze – oh wait."

"What?"

"Chocolate milk. And still fresh."

Izumo's voice is skeptical. "You think the sugar's okay?"

"Nah, what will it do to a kid? It'll only give him sugar rush so his hair stands on end – well, even more than it does already. Here, kid."

And so, the poor idiots give Kakashi the hyperactive hedgehog sugar.

(:~:)

Genma _senses_ something is wrong when he halts outside his apartment building. The cicadas have already begun to chirp, the summer twilight deepening around him, streetlight flickering on to soften the greying shadows on the edge of night. He had had a rather pleasant day, by all accounts, pigging out at that barbeque place with Asuma and the others, joined by Anko and Gai after a while, drunk gallons of sake until Shizune had been forced to give him an instant hangover with a quick anti-alcohol chakra burst so he could at least stagger home. But now, something seems overly quiet about the place, the chirp of cicadas reverberating and amplifying in the sudden cold.

He groans as he stumbles up the stairs. The sudden cold does nothing to help his headache, now grown to a feeling of being sledgehammered repeatedly in his skull.

The door to his apartment swings ominously outwards on silent, oiled hinges.

Carnage.

Izumo is draped like a dead fish across the sofa, his wheezing breaths the only indication that he is still alive. Kotetsu crawls over to Genma's feet, reaching for him with bloodied fingers. Kunai are scattered across the floor, edges dull from use, the walls splintered and cracking, tiny, flour-covered footprints lacing the entire ceiling. Dishes smashed into porcelain shards cover the once smooth floorboards, now gouged and pitted beyond recognition. Genma's shaking finger reaches for the light switch, but one glance at the lightbulb in the watery moonlight reveals it has shattered.

With a snarl, he crouches down and grabs Kotetsu by his collar, and shouts, "What happened?!"

"He's…not…human," the reply comes, half-whispered on the edge of consciousness.

"What?"

Kotetsu gestures over his shoulder before his eyes drop closed, falling into blessed unconsciousness. Genma stares for a moment at the blood-soaked bandage over Kotetsu's nose, and then raises his head peer into the back of the apartment, his heat hammering in his chest and a strange sense of foreboding uncurling in his stomach.

A brilliant ray of white moonlight catches his silver hair as Kakashi, covered all over from chocolate milk, ketchup, and ceiling plaster, smiles an exhausted smile through his mask as he hugs a pillow contentedly, piffling in his sleep. His thumb is stuffed in his small pink mouth.

Genma stares down at the image of a perfect little angel, takes one more look at the remains of his apartment, and nudges Izumo off the sofa with his uninjured foot. Izumo thuds to the floor gracelessly, his bandanna unfurling and revealing scratches on his forehead. With a sigh, Genma collapses into the sofa, brushing bits of glass off it, and closes his eyes. Perhaps when he wakes up in the morning, this will all have been some sort of alcohol-induced dream.

He just hopes he can preserve his sanity.

**Like it? I know this seems like a waffly sort of filler chapter, but next chapter I'm going to set the plot bunnies going. I'll update in…say…eight or nine days. Chibi-Kakashi is going to be even more awesome than he his now. Review please? I'll give you a cookie if you do.**


	3. Father and Sensei

**New chapter! Thanks to all those who reviewed and favorited. You're all awesome. This one's slightly more angsty, but it's angsty cuteness, and it had to be done because I'm moving the plot along. Enjoy!**

The kunai slices through the air with a whisper of wind on its tail, a murmur of death that dances over ten inches of gleaming dark metal, as if foreshadowing the lives the blade has taken, and would take. Soundlessly, the kunai splits the plane of falling leaves, like an arrow would cleave the silver curtain of a waterfall, and emerald leaves scatter, raindrops that dart earthwards in beautiful twisting parabolas. As the leaves alight with a sigh on the ground, a soft _thump_ of metal imbedding in wood resounds through the yard.

Silent footsteps approach. A small finger strokes the handle of the kunai, halting where smooth metal ends and the rough bark of the tree begins. The chubby hand encloses around the string-wrapped handle and tugs.

And tugs again.

A frown creases the navy fabric of the mask above it. With a snort, the thrower of the kunai places a sandaled foot on the bark, and slowly brings up his other foot until he stands horizontally on the trunk. Two hands close around the kunai impatiently, and with a small huff, tears the kunai out of the wood.

Kakashi yelps as he loses control of his chakra, his feet moonwalking desperately on the pitted bark before gravity claims him and he falls three feet into the springy grass below.

Kakashi stares up into the swaying branches, the sunlight jewels in the swinging ochre hair of the tree. As he watches, two birds burst into song on some hidden branch high above, trilling a bright prelude to the dawning day. Kakashi had woken up from dreams of warmth and laughter just as the morning sun had edged its fiery rim over the edge of the world, and had immediately climbed up Genma's cupboard to find the jounin's spare set of shinobi equipment where Asuma had 'hidden' it yesterday. Barely sparing a glance at the three shinobi slumped across the apartment like rag dolls, Kakashi had jumped out the window and slid down to the small yard behind the apartment building. _Morning training time._ He hadn't quite understood why he decided to do this, but it seemed right, almost a force of habit, so he just went along with it.

Now, Kakashi watches the clouds as he spins the adult-sized kunai around his tiny finger, his breathing calm and steady, just like he'd been taught by…

_By…?_

Disjointed images flicker through the recesses of his mind. A mess of white hair, white sleeve edged with crimson, short sword sheathed over flak jacket – _whose jacket_ – a warm voice, silent power, a gentle hand on his hair, comfort and support, omnipresence – white chakra – no, _White Fang_, _love_, open door and – _no no no_ _so much scarlet_, a sable-tipped pool with a silhouetted figure curled in a shadow of its former self, shock and disappointment so strong it _hurts,_ terror and grief and confusion and blood on his fingertips and salt on his cheeks and on his lips and smell of iron in his nose in darkness alone oh so _alone…_

Kakashi blinks and finds his mask soaked with sweat and tears. The tree sends a shadow over his little form where it lies curled into a ball among the leaves, chilling small limbs and sending the kunai tumbling from his suddenly numb fingers. Two words reverberate in his white-haired head, resounding until he presses his hands to his ears and opens his tiny mouth in a wordless howl.

_Otou-san…_

(:~:)

Jiraiya hadn't thought Tsunade had been serious when her message reached him, informing him of Kakashi's predicament and in a few short sentences telling him to get his lazy butt back to Konoha and fufill his duty as Kakashi's grand-sensei. So, Jiraiya had been forced to cut short his intel-gathering tour of the surrounding areas and returned to Konoha overnight.

Of course, Jiraiya hadn't expected the carnage that greeted him when he pushed open the door the Genma's apartment. But over forty years of shinobi experience had taught him to deal with anything – _anything_, so he sidesteps Izumo and Kotetsu's corpse-like forms and simply pulls out a small vial of clear liquid from a hidden pocket, holding it under Genma's nose.

The resulting sneeze has Jiraiya moving smoothly to the side to avoid the senbon that explodes across the room, embedding itself in the far wall. "Good morning," he says conversationally, to a very bedraggled Genma.

Genma sniffs and rubs his nose as he painfully straightens on the couch, sounding a myriad of crunching noises as the glass shards shift under his weight. "What time is it?" he groans, rubbing the newly-formed bruise on the back of his head. _Why did I sleep with my bandanna on?_ The metal of his hitai-ate bumps against the tender flesh again, and he winces before snapping to attention when his eyes focus on the mass of white hair. "Jiraiya-sama," he adds respectfully. Or with at least enough respect as conveyed by a very hung-over shinobi.

"Late enough for _me_ to be here," Jiraiya chuckles. "Where's the kid?"

"Uhhh…"

Jiraiya snorts. "I'll find him. Wake these two idiots up and get them to the hospital. I take it they gave him sugar?"

Genma blinks. "I…don't know."

Jiraiya claps him on the shoulder, ignoring how the weight sends Genma's knees wobbling. "I know this isn't usually like you, so I'll attribute it to Kakashi's unpredictability." His gaze suddenly hardens. "You know that if the ANBU weren't stationed outside, anyone might have gotten in to Kakashi?"

Genma has the grace to bow his head. "My apologies, Jiraiya-sama."

A pause. "Don't worry about it. My pupil didn't choose you as his personal guard for nothing. And," – Jiraiya grins – "the ANBU were probably too freaked out that one of their most distinguished captains is now a hyperactive kid with dangerous shinobi skills." He glances at the remains of Genma's apartment. "This just proves it."

Genma grunts acknowledgement through an increasingly painful headache. He crouches by Izumo – or Kotetsu, but his eyes are too blurred to care – and slaps him gracelessly across the face to wake him up.

Jiraiya leaves the moans echoing around the apartment behind him and leaps over the windowsill. A small smile splits his features when he sees Kakashi curled in the shadow of the tree. It reminds him of a happier time, years ago, when he would visit Sakumo unannounced and watch little Kakashi toddle around the garden as the two of them sat about drinking sake. But the grin slides off Jiraiya's face when he sees the gouges in the already pitted bark and the way the little form shivers imperceptibly.

Jiraiya finds his feet move with an urgency and worry unknown to him since…well, since he had been informed of the horror in the Hatake compound and rushed over with Minato on his heels to find Kakashi staring sightlessly at the garden fence, sounds of ANBU clearing the scene sounding painfully loudly behind him.

At the time, the ANBU hadn't even bothered to remove Kakashi from the scene before examining his father's body.

Now Jiraiya is surprised to see his hand shaking slightly as he reaches for Kakashi. _Shinigami, the child's small,_ he curses. Dreading what he might see, he brushes the mass of silver hair away from the sweat-soaked mask.

A single dark eye blinks up at him warily before recognition sparks warmth in the layered iris, and short arms wrap tightly around Jiraiya's neck. Before he can even open his mouth to speak, Kakashi has already buried his face in Jiraiya's crimson coat, exuding a relief so intense that Jiraiya finds tears start in his eyes. Of course, they melt away a moment later, but he hasn't had such a raw, emotional moment since he found Tsunade. Uncontrollably, his arms wrap around the toddler, enclosing him in warmth.

A while later, Jiraiya ventures, "Kakashi…Kashi-chan?" His tongue slips into the old title with which he used to address the young boy before his sudden growth to shinobi.

A small whisper into the heavy cloth of his coat. _"Jiraiya-jiji."_

_Jiji_ to _sama_ in the space of months. Jiraiya scoops up the child and carries him easily out to the street. Kakashi feels so weightless in his arms. Fragile, even. He remembers how the small child who threw wooden kunai at trees while shouting gleefully in the garden had abruptly become a deadly shinobi, rising from new academy student to chunin in the insane period of eighteen months. But still, that old joy had been there, manifesting itself in the small, hidden smiles when Jiraiya had gifted him with saury on sticks, in the quiet glow of happiness when Sakumo gave him rare praise.

Of course, that Kakashi had all but died after what Sakumo did, and buried even deeper with his teammates' and sensei's deaths. But Kakashi hadn't been a child anymore when he contacted death. He was a shinobi. And shinobi _dealt with it._

Now, all that sorrow must be crashing down upon an eighteen-month-old mind.

Jiraiya swallows and strokes Kakashi's silver hair as they meander through the streets, feeling the child's shivers cease slowly. Jiraiya is the only remnant of Kakashi's early years. And he'd better be there for him.

(:~:)

By the time they reach the hospital, Kakashi has calmed down enough to peek between Jiraiya's arms at the noon crowds around them.

As they near the giant double doors of the hospital, a voice suddenly bellows, "GREETINGS, JIRAIYA-SAMA! MAY I ASK WHAT YOUTHFUL PURSUIT HAS BROUGHT YOU TO THIS PLACE OF HEALING?"

Jiraiya pulls a grimace as he watches a completely un-hung-over Might Gai's smile flash dazzlingly at him above a glaringly unsubtle thumbs-up. "I came to collect Naruto," he replies, hoping beyond hope that Kakashi would stay hidden in his arms.

Gai peers curiously at the half-hidden clump of hair and cloth clutched to Jiraiya's chest. "You have a curious fur-bundle in your hands, Jiraiya-sama."

Jiraiya feels his heart drop into his stomach as Kakashi squirms around, his head popping up from Jiraiya's embrace. It looks somewhat like a white hedgehog has poofed into existence above Jiraiya's sleeves.

At this, Gai howls a laugh, shouting, "WHY, THIS WOULD BE THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF MY ETERNAL RIVAL KAKASHI IN THE GLORIOUS EXPLOSION OF Y–"

A pause.

Gai's grin turns into a frown of confusion. His voice sounds impossibly weak as he _stutters_, "Wait…wait a moment…is this…?"

"_Good day,_ Gai." Jiraiya barks a nervous laugh and makes a break for it, wincing as Kakashi sticks a small hand up around Jiraiya's elbow and waves at Gai, giggling, "Wha' did ya say?" Jiraiya wouldn't be surprised if the squeal is accompanied by an eye-smile, too.

Some way behind them, Gai's knees give way as he is for once completely reduced to silence.

Needless to say, Jiraiya is _very_ relieved when they make it to Naruto's room without encountering anyone else. The relief melts away to a sigh of weariness when he finds the room empty and the window open. _Naruto snuck out again._ But given that he has a pretty good idea of where Naruto is right now, and he can't be bothered to run there, Jiraiya keeps a firm grip on Kakashi and with some difficulty forms his fingers into a seal. Kakashi looks down at his fingers and copies Jiraiya gleefully.

"Shunshin."

A giggle. _"Shuuuunsheeeen!"_

The flaps hanging down from the roof of Ichiraku's waver in the sudden gust of wind. Teuchi smiles and waves Jiraiya into a seat, exclaiming, "Jiraiya-sama! Welcome, welcome. You're looking for Naruto?"

Jiraiya notices Teuchi gives Ayame a rather pointed look and she gives him a wary glance before she disappears into the back room. _A pity._ But in the corner, under a hooded hospital robe, a sliver of blond hair is barely visible.

As a bowl of miso ramen is placed before Jiraiya, he says gruffly, "Hey, brat."

"Hey, Ero-sennin," Naruto replies in a muffled voice, too intent on stuffing himself.

With a sigh, Jiraiya juggles Kakashi and his bowl of ramen as he shifts over to sit by Naruto. "You can't keep on running away from hospital like that," he mutters.

"They always forget how fast I heal."

Jiraiya nods and stretches, before something across the street catches his attention. Taking advantage of the distraction, Kakashi bounces eagerly – apparently completely recovered – and reaches for a pair of chopsticks. Naruto seems to notice him for the first time, and watches in awe as Kakashi pulls down his mask, squeaks, "Itadakimasu!" and virtually inhales Jiraiya's ramen.

Jiraiya turns back to his bowl to find it empty and a re-masked Kakashi crawling into Naruto's lap, mumbling, "Mina'o-sensei."

Oblivious to Jiraiya's increased heart rate and rapid breathing, Naruto frowns. "What? That again?" As Kakashi settles into Naruto's embrace, Naruto turns to Jiraiya. "Ano-sa, Ero-sennin, why d'you think he calls me that?"

Jiraiya hides his shock by stuffing his face with ramen from a new bowl Teuchi had handed him. "Well," he mumbles through the buckwheat noodles, "Minato was the Yondaime's name. He was my student, and Kakashi's sensei, so maybe he thinks you're the Yondaime because you know me and you look like him."

"Nah, that's not really it," Naruto replies. "He called me that the first time he saw me after he got hit by that jutsu. Tsunade no ba-chan thinks it's because I look like the Yondaime, too, but I don't know. I mean, we're not related or anything! We can't look _that_ much alike."

Jiraiya hides a private thought that Naruto's resemblance to Minato is mind-bogglingly accurate. "Same hair and eye colour," he forces a chuckle. "The village is crawling with people who look the same anyway."

"Yeah," Naruto says hesitantly. "But…have you actually seen anyone in the village with hair and eye colour like mine?"

Jiraiya chokes on a mouthful and coughs to clear his throat. "Actually, now you mention it, it's not all that common," he admits. _Find tangent to go on, find a tangent… _"But you know, you and most people in the Yamanaka clan have the same colour hair," he says with relief.

Naruto waves a hand in mock-horror. "What, a relation to Ino? No way."

"Anyway," Jiraiya says hurriedly, reaching out and snagging Kakashi. "Kashi-chan, this isn't Minato. This is Naruto, remember? Na-ru-to."

Kakashi looks up at Jiraiya, and then sends an all-too-piercing stare at the blonde shinobi. "Naruto," he says clearly.

"Hai, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto answers, giving him one of his blazing smiles.

Kakashi's eye creases in confusion.

"Don't call him Kakashi for now," Jiraiya suggests. "Why not call him what we all called him when he was this age? Kashi."

"Kashi…sensei?" Naruto hazards.

Kakashi beams through his mask.

"Okay! Now that's taken care of, we need to go get some extra clothes for Kashi-chan here." Jiraiya announces, glad for any opportunity to get Naruto away from thoughts about Minato.

"Where?" Shopping isn't something Naruto does on a regular basis. Except for ramen, of course.

"Let's get you properly discharged from the hospital first." Jiraiya hands Kakashi back to Naruto and slaps down some money on the counter. "You'll see."

(:~:)

The house is rather large and in a reasonably good neighbourhood, and perhaps once might have been filled with laughter and light, but there is something stale about the air and the way its windows are dark with dust that belies it has been derelict for years. Naruto traces a line with his gaze in the white-painted wooden walls where the paint has cracked from heat and sunlight. There is a woven mat on the doorstep, and once-bright curtains faded until they are barely visible behind the grey windows. When Jiraiya pushes the door open, the sunlight filters in through the flurry of dust, revealing two hooks for coats and weapons, one set at the average height for a adult and one obviously lowered for a child. A mask hangs from the lower hook. A cloak dances in the sudden wind, nearly falling from the higher one.

"What…what is this?" Naruto asks.

Jiraiya whirls, drawing a circle in the dust with his feet, and raises a finger to his lips. "Quiet. Don't wake the kid," he gestures at Kakashi's sleeping head on Naruto's shoulder. "It might be better for him to wait outside," Jiraiya hisses as he disappears into the gloom.

Naruto feels his pulse quicken. There is something profoundly wrong about this place, like a child's picture of a family, preserved, creaseless and seamless, but yellowed with age. And the faint smell of iron presses against his nose, lingering like a bad memory wavering in the air…

He yelps as something digs into his shoulder.

Kakashi's hands turn into sharp claws around Naruto's neck as his nose twitches and his eye snaps open. He begins to draw increasingly desperate breaths, his small chest rising and falling in hyperventilation. And then he squirms out of Naruto's embrace, his hair on end as if caught in a hunter's gaze, stumbles upon his landing and takes off down the road without a single glance back.

As if he is _afraid_ to look back.

"Kakashi-sen…Kashi sensei!" Naruto calls after the toddler, his longer strides quickly catching up with the head of silver hair. "Where are you going?" His hand snags the back of Kakashi's collar gently, and to his surprise, Kakashi pivots on a small foot and throws himself at Naruto's leg, digging his face into the knee as if Naruto is a particular pillar that Kakashi-ivy is intent on squeezing the life out of. Naruto's arms go around Kakashi instinctively, and to his surprise, he feels the fabric above his knee slowly becoming soggy with the tears that drip from Kakashi's chin.

_Oh crap._

_What should I do? I don't know, dattebayo! What would a parent do?_

But Naruto has never had parents, so he can think of nothing but to hug Kakashi tighter.

Apparently it is the right thing to do, as Kakashi's sobs slowly quieten.

A string of spectacular curses announce Jiraiya's return. "Crud. I shouldn't have brought him…I shouldn't…" Jiraiya stares bleakly down at the two of them over the bundle in his arms, and tries to say more, but finds he can't. Finally, he manages, "Let's go home."

Naruto picks up Kakashi and follows Jiraiya as they make their way through the afternoon air. Kakashi clings to Naruto as tightly as he had clung to Minato on the night of his father's death, finding solace in the steady beat of Naruto's heart as he had in Minato's.

His mind has begun to unravel, and although he might not know it, a small part of Kashi the child is gone, replaced with Hatake Kakashi the shinobi.

(:~:)

Naruto is too intent on stroking the spikes of downy silver hair to notice where they are until he nearly walks into Jiraiya's back. "Where are we? I'm tired, dattebayo," he groans. All that talk he had heard before about how kids started off light and then grow into miniature boulders when carried had been true, after all.

"Your sensei's place," Jiraiya answers blandly as he leads the way up a few flights of stairs. He snorts. "You've probably never been here, have you?" At this, Naruto shakes his head numbly. At the unassuming wooden door at the very top, Jiraiya plunges a hand in his pocket.

He freezes.

Jiraiya checks his other pocket, before grinning sheepishly and shrugging. "Uh…I may have…misplaced…the key," he mumbles. At Naruto's glare, he quickly adds, "Don't worry! I'm sure I can pick the lock."

"But this is _Kakashi-sensei_ we're talking about," Naruto says dubiously. "Would he just _lock_ the door?"

Jiraiya's lockpicks – _where did he get those _–are already in the lock before his expression changes to one of abject dread. "Alright, alright, maybe we should be more careful about this..."

Contemplative silence. "So what are we going to do?"

"I could dismantle the traps, if there are any. It wouldn't take too long."

Naruto begins to groan, but his gaze snaps to Kakashi, for the little jounin has slipped out of Naruto's grip to land cat-like on the floor. His hand fishes in a pocket, and comes out with a tiny key.

"Great," Jiraiya mutters. "It got miniaturised like the rest of his equipment."

Kakashi gives a perfect, adorable little eye-roll and gathers chakra into the palm of his hand. With a rustle, white light envelops the key, dancing about Kakashi's glove like a flurry of snowflakes in wind. When the light fades and Jiraiya and Naruto blink the spots out of their eyes, the key is normal-sized again.

Kakashi raises it toward Jiraiya solemnly, as if to say, _"Here!"_

Jiraiya snatches it up and stares at it, muttering, "What? How…?" And then a sudden thought seems to occur to him. "Kashi!" he snaps, making the child recoil at his excitement. "Could you do the same thing to yourself?"

Kakashi frowns and scratches the back of his neck. The look of intense concentration on his face is so like his adult self that Naruto takes a step back. Finally, the little shoulders drop in a shrug. "Nah-uh," Kakashi mumbles, shaking his head in disappointment.

And then the moment of Kakashi the shinobi passes and the two-foot tall toddler raises his arms at Naruto in the universal kid language of 'pick me up'. Naruto complies.

With another sigh – this day is getting rather full of them – Jiraiya fits the key in the lock and finds it is met with surprisingly little resistance. Listening at the door, Jiraiya is glad Kakashi found them the key. Something vital goes _clunk_ in the recesses, gears working and a taste of chakra coats his tongue, wafting through the edges of the door. When the rustlings and clicking fall silent, Jiraiya gently, _carefully_ opens the door.

Unadorned white walls. Clean wooden floorboards. An ANBU mask in the shape of a dog's face hanging in the corner. A cupboard and a bed, both very narrow and simple. But on the ledge above the bed, with the afternoon sun glinting through a wide window behind them, are two pictures.

One, the same photograph Naruto keeps by his bedside, and he knows Sakura must by hers too. Kakashi's smile is hidden under his mask as he presses down on Naruto and Sasuke's heads, but his eye is sparkling with wit. Sakura's lips are open in a frozen moment of laughter between them. The second picture, older, the colours more faded, but without a speck of dust on its smooth surface, framed with a wooden border so polished that it speaks of the loving care it must have received over so many years.

And within the picture, the Yondaime grins at the future with one hand upon a dark-haired boy's head and the other upon Kakashi's. The girl with rectangular tattoos on her cheeks smiles sweetly, but Kakashi stares at the camera with a sort of cool disdain in his dark eyes.

Naruto blinks.

_Wait…eyes? What happened to his sharingan?_

Jiraiya shoots him a look that says, "_I'll explain later,"_ and stuffs the bundle he brought from the Hatake compound into Kakashi's small washing machine.

An hour later, the baby clothes are clean, and though slightly singed by the katon jutsu Jiraiya used to dry them, are folded neatly at the end of the bed. Kakashi is fast asleep, hugging his pillow, perhaps comforted by the familiar surroundings.

Naruto watches his sensei sleep, marvelling at how relaxed he seems. Should he chance upon Kakashi napping – and those chances were few – Naruto had always been aware that Kakashi was always in the lightest of slumber, ready to snap awake and throw kunai at any opponent.

Jiraiya coughs and settles onto the edge of the bed, his hand stroking Kakashi's spiky hair, as Naruto has taken the only chair by the desk. "I suppose you want to know about his past," he says resignedly. "Genius…he graduated from the academy at the insane age of five, you know." At Naruto's gape, Jiraiya snorts. "He was in ANBU by your age. But other than that, I don't know whether I should say."

It is a testament to how much Naruto has matured that he replies as he does. "I don't know whether he'd want you to tell me… but I have so many questions. Why was he so scared when we went to his old house? Why doesn't he have the sharingan in that picture? And…"

Barely a whisper. "And why do I feel such a connection to the Yondaime…?"

Jiraiya's breath whooshes out of him as he continues to stroke Kakashi's hair off his forehead. "I cannot answer your first and second question, because it is not my place to tell you. And I don't know whether you're ready to know the answer to the third."

A moment, one that may be the last of a time, or the first of many to come. Naruto's features break into a wide grin. "I won't be ready until I've surpassed the previous Hokages," he declares. He meets Jiraiya's gaze straight on and says, "I'll wait until I know I'm ready. And then I'll ask."

"Good." Giving Kakashi one last pat on the head, Jiraiya gets up with a huff, stretching the kinks out of his back. "Okay. I'm gong back to _my_ place now. Cook yourself something."

"What?"

"You'll be fine. There's probably loads of stuff in the cupboard above the stove. Take care of Kashi-chan – don't give him sugar!" Before Naruto can say another word, Jiraiya's mane of white hair as already disappeared out the door.

Naruto sighs, glances at the piffling child, and goes in search of ramen.

(:~:)

In the early hours of the morning, when the moon is a ghostly coin wavering under the blued waters of the sky just before daybreak, Kakashi wakes with a start. Something in his chest has tightened, warning him. It is not a clear message, just a feeling, an intuitive sense of danger that has been honed by years of battle and experience that no reverse-henge can take away. The last time this sense of foreboding came to him was the few days before the kyuubi's attack. This is not a fear for his own self. It is understanding, a simple _knowledge_ that someone important to the village and himself is in danger.

The sable eye narrows. The toddler that stepped out of the treeline into his team's shocked gaze has changed. In the soft blue light, his silver-limned hair trembles as he wavers on what to do. His mind is still largely a child's.

So he does what most children do. Act first, plan on the way. Shooting a glance at Naruto's snoring form sprawled across his desk, Kakashi slides open the window silently and, with some difficultly, climbs down the drainage pipe to the ground below, taking his time. He doesn't quite know who is in danger, but as he had headed out to morning training the previous day simply because he felt he _should_, this is the same. It feels _right._

A glance up at the ANBU stationed on the roof has the masked figures scurrying away.

A piece of useful knowledge worms its way into his mind and he reaches for the bag of equipment he had taken from Naruto's side, slices a fingertip with barely a wince, and flashes through the handseals with a practiced ease that surprises even him. _Boar,_ he thinks. _Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram._ "Kuchiyose no jutsu!" he yells, as if by raising the volume of his high-pitched voice, he can somehow channel more power and chakra into the jutsu.

A _poof_ later, Kakashi throws himself at a very surprised-looking Pakkun and Bull. "Pa'k'n," he giggles. "Missed ya."

Pakkun stares at his summoner in complete shock. "Kakashi!" he nigh on explodes. "What happened?!"

Kakashi sits back on his heels, sucking on his bleeding finger, and mumbles, "Rev…rever… henge." Bull thuds over and begins to lick him, making one side of Kakashi's hairdo stick up even straighter than before. Kakashi begins to chuckle again.

Pakkun's eyes widen. "Reverse henge? But you _can_ reverse the jutsu, can't you?" Seeing Kakashi's blank look, the little pug sighs. "Can you change yourself back?"

Kakashi shrugs and tilts his head at Pakkun.

Pakkun facepalms. Or rather, face_paws._ "They changed your mind too…but you're reverting, arent' you?" – _Kakashi nods _– "So you summoned us for a reason, then?" he says wearily. A _lot_ of nodding.

"Yes!" Kakashi bobs happily. "Go…'okag…tow'r…"

"Climb on," Bull growls in his deep rumble.

"Yay!"

When Kakashi is settled comfortably on Bull's broad back, Pakkun waves a paw and they dart of with speed only ninken dogs can achieve. Kakashi's laughter echoes down the street, interspersed with the thumping of heavy pawfalls.

(:~:)

Tsunade's gaze is stern as she examines the Niju Shotai, twenty platoons of shinobi standing at attention before her on the roof of the Hokage tower. Shikamaru yawns beside Asuma, who elbows him. "You have been assembled here," Tsunade begins, "to capture members of the group of nuke-nin called the Akatsuki."

From behind a pillar, Kakashi's eye is as wide and round as the moon above it.

"No, Kakashi," Pakkun hisses warningly next to him.

**There we go! As you can probably tell, things are going to escalate quite a bit in the next chapter. I probably can't update in just over a week like I did this time, since school starts again tomorrow and I have a time limit on how much I can use my laptop for non-work-related stuff, but don't worry, you won't have to wait AGES. I'll be quick, just not in a week. And I decided that, well, this is fanfiction. Canon can go down the ditch. I'm going to mess around with the Akatsuki big time! KAKASHI ADORBS! Review please?**


	4. Kashi Does Not Approve of Zombies

**Apologies for the week-long wait. But on a happier note, now that the freakish amount of last-minute coursework is over (I don't get why teachers wait until the last minute to set it, anyway) I present unto all of you my newest chapter. Hope you like it. And apologies for the extent of violence…I was stressing over work when I wrote most of this. I may be slightly evil to enjoy angst so much.**

**And a note, to Elle the guest reviewer:**** Thank you for reviewing those chapters! It really, really annoyed me that I couldn't PM you personally, so I'm going to give you a virtual hug here instead. You're awesome. I love your wit. You're going to like this one, hopefully XD**

For the hundredth time on that day, Pakkun curses the unwritten rule that all summons must obey their summoners. That, added to the integral bond of trust and teamwork between shinobi and ninken, means one very important thing:

Pakkun cannot disobey his master's orders.

And Kakashi had ordered Pakkun to lead him to Asuma's team.

Now, there are many, _many_ drawbacks to doing this. The first of which is that obviously, Kakashi is currently eighteen months old in terms of size. That effectively limits whatever advantage adult Kakashi had in terms of height and reach. Secondly, the bag of weapons he has on his hips is crammed with adult-sized weapons, weighing down the little body until Kakashi had been nearly unable to climb onto Bull's back. And worse of all, Kakashi's mind is wandering somewhere in between that of an eighteen-month-old child's and an adult shinobi's.

Pakkun can only pray that this catastrophic combination can result in something unexpected and unspeakably brilliant, like the Kakashi he knows.

They had been running – well, loping – and although Kakashi seemed to be enjoying it all, as they had drawn closer and closer to where Pakkun senses that Asuma's team has halted, Kakashi grew still. Now, the sable eye is focussed on the shadows under the trees ahead, as if daring the silhouetted forms to ambush them. Pakkun turns back to the branches that whip like senbon thrown awry out of the gloom, wondering at how Kakashi's gaze has grown from that of a child's to an ANBU captain's within the space of a few hours.

But no time for that now – they have to increase their pace. It would have helped if they could tail Asuma, Shikamaru and the other two – who, Pakkun notes, are strangely lagging, as if recently injured – from a standard distance, but Kakashi's mop of silver hair had been spotted by an ANBU from across the street and Tsunade duly informed. This had led to Pakkun, Kakashi, and bull being waylaid for an hour, the first half of which was taken up by a very peeved Tsunade screaming gale-force curses at Kakashi, and the second half of which was an intricate plot to escape the chunin who had been assigned the task of guarding them.

And now Pakkun must catch up to a platoon running full-pelt, tracking them with nothing but his nose. This had been a simple matter before, when he could focus on the scent ahead and Kakashi would be acutely aware of their surroundings, but now, Pakkun is forced to scan the surrounding forest for foreign scents as well.

Kakashi cocks his head just as Pakkun senses a subtle change in the taste of the air. "They've stopped," he calls over his shoulder. "And they have company. I don't like the smell. It's unnatural."

"I know," Kakashi answers. Seeing Pakkun's fleeting, worried expression before the little pug turns back to the labyrinth of branches, Kakashi says, "Don' worry, Pakki." Pakkun's head snaps around at the nickname – he hadn't heard that since ages past, when childish syllables had made him 'Pakki' and Kakashi was 'Kashi'.

Chuckles. "Imma oooookkkaaaay." Kakashi's eye curves in a smile.

As the trees thin for a moment and an ominously clouded sky becomes visible overhead, Pakkun decides that if they make it out of this mission alive, and provided his summoner reverts, Kakashi owes him a bucketful of treats.

(:~:)

A shout of pain explodes into existence in the blinding light just beyond the treeline. Alighting soundlessly in the pooling shadows under the last few solid trunks, Pakkun stares at the battlefield, not quite believing his eyes. He senses Kakashi slide off Bull behind him, the small shinobi sandals soundless on the covering of rotten leaves.

Kakashi's eye widens.

Four Konoha shinobi. Izumo and Kotetsu, scratched and already tired from their encounter with a certain silver-haired hedgehog, but called up due to a shortage in forces after barely a day of rest. Kunai nearly tumble from their slack fingers as they stare past Shikamaru between them, who is crouched on one knee, grimacing at his injuries. Asuma…one side of his face blotched an angry red by flames, his trench knives held in hands that are trembling with exhaustion.

…And before them, a masked and goggled shinobi with dark skin and his head held at an angle so abnormal that it belies he is not fully human, wrapped in a sable coat with crimson clouds, holding the _severed head_ of his partner up by the hair.

And then, to Pakkun's horrified gaze, the mouth in the blackened, transparent skin of the head _opens._

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!" the head howls. "THAT–"

As the head explodes in a furious tirade of expletives, Pakkun notices that Kakashi's gaze has changed. Kakashi _knows_ he should be afraid, but somehow, he isn't. He feels the blood rushing to his fingertips, holding there with each slow, steady beat of his heart, and he _understands._

With the same childish train of thought, the same instinct that had led him to leave for the Hokage tower that morning, Kakashi knows what he now must do. He selects a precious few weapons from the huge (to him) weapons bag, and sticks them in his belt carefully.

Asuma goes down in a painful thud as the man in the dark mask moves unimaginably fast. The head, still screaming, is placed on a headless corpse holding a scythe, and, unbelievably, the corpse _stands up._

Kakashi's hands curl into tiny fists.

Those are _bad_ shinobi.

And bad shinobi have to be disposed of.

So Kakashi ignores Pakkun's warning paw on his foot and steps out into the burning sunlight.

(:~:)

To Shikamaru, the fight between his team and the two members of Akatsuki had gone beyond troublesome. The moment those two had burned his sensei, rage boiled up from his heart and settled in his ears, the blood roaring in uncontrolled waves.

So when Kakuzu steps forward with a careless laugh pask Izumo's syrup field and Kotetsu's mace, tendrils exploding from his arms and sending bizarrely-elongated hands wrapping around the chunnins' throats, Shikamaru hates himself, hates the weakness in his limbs and the lack of chakra in his fingers that prevents him from leaping forward and tearing out Kakuzu's throat with any one of the thousand different methods his agile mind has conceived of within half a second.

But a clear voice from the treeline breaks into his thoughts like water parting fire.

"Your oppo…'ponent…is me," Kakashi declares, raising his chin as if to increase his unfortunate height of approximately two feet. His sharingan is blazing in all its scarlet glory.

An insane laugh would have tumbled out of Shikamaru's lips were it not for Asuma, struggling to raise himself from the dirt, golden eyes widening as he croaks, "Kakashi…no…" His words are cut off as blood suddenly spurts from underneath his flak jacket.

Hidan's erupts in maniacal laughter, the blades of his scythe embedded in his chest. "ARE YOU…ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" he screams, nearly crying with mirth. "ARE ALL YOU IDIOTS SO FREAKING RETARDED THAT YOU'VE SENT A BABY AFTER ME?!"

Kakashi resolutely steps forward, his feet never wavering as they take him, step after short step, towards Hidan. In his peripheral vision, he watches as Asuma coughs up blood, an identical injury to Hidan's spreading across his front. Shikamaru jerks. "Erase the symbol!" he shouts at Kakashi. Now is not the time to worry about the reasons as to which the child exists.

Hidan continues to laugh, a horrible, endless, unknown sound of the mad, and crouches down on the blood-marked symbol he stands on, beckoning to Kakashi. "Come on, little freak," he leers, baring white-edged, translucent teeth. "Come over here and give Hidan-sama some of your blood, I'll show you a nice magic trick of mine, and when your blood's all that's left of your _worthless little body_, YOU'LL KNOW NOT TO MESS WITH ME!"

Kakashi is unperturbed as he reaches Hidan's feet. His left eye closed, his right eye is wide open in a perfect picture of adorableness, raising his arms in the toddler-signal, _"Pick me up!"_

Several things happen at once.

Shikamaru is up on his feet and sprinting towards them in an instant. Hidan's terrible smile spreads like an open wound as he bends down and reaches for Kakashi. Kakashi's smile, the perfect, pure smile of a child, is visible for a short moment as he pulls down his mask and places a standard-ration sugar pill on his tongue.

As Hidan's black-and-white hands descend upon him, Kakashi mutters, " Imma sorry, As'uma."

Hidan howls as Kakashi's sugar-fueled foot smashes into his chin, pushing him back a step, _out of the symbol for the Jashin ritual._ And then his howl is stopped short by the smoke bomb Kakashi's free hand stuffs into Hidan's gaping mouth. Kakashi flips backwards over the now empty symbol and throws down a water bomb, erasing the blood-symbol on the dirt.

BOOM.

Asuma, whose head had snapped back as Hidan's had at Kakashi's kick, falls backwards into Shikamaru's hands. Hidan screams in intoxicated pain as his skin returns to its normal shade, smoke pouring out of he hole that was his mouth.

A moment later, his mouth has healed, but there is no symbol for the rite to continue with. And not to mention, at that precise moment, Kakashi sticks a handful of kunai in his chest. Hidan coughs, his eyes widening in untamed, infinite pools of darkened fury even as he screams with newly-healed lungs, "GAAAAAAKI!"

Kakuzu sends out black-oiled tendrils towards Kakashi, but the little tot darts around them at an insane speed, small bursts of blued lightning the only indication he has passed. Izumo and Kotetsu collapse, spluttering, to the ground as twin chidori slice through Kakuzu's arms.

A thought flashes through Shikamaru's mind. _Things are…going good._ Immediately, something else occurs to him. _Were going good. Kakashi's eighteen-month-old body can't keep up with two S-class nuke-nin at once._

As predicted, Kakashi skids to a stop when his sharingan takes in the sight of Hidan's spear hovering above his own heart, his feet planted securely in a redrawn symbol. The crimson and sable pinwheel narrows at the ritual. _Inhuman._ "NOT SO FAST NOW, GAKI?!" Hidan bellows. He turns to Shikamaru, who takes in the scene with concealed desperation. "So," Hidan taunts. "Say goodbye to your captain."

Kakuzu's hands wrap around Kakashi's struggling body. Hidan's spear catches the light horribly on its blood-blackened tip as, with an exultant shout, he plunges it towards his heart.

The world flashes white.

Shikamaru's scream. "SENSEI!"

A click in Kakashi's numb mind. _Asuma…_

Hidan's spear _crunches_ as it embeds itself in flesh.

But it is not his. Hidan howls in rage as his spear finds, not his own heart, but a mass of crows, a flock of sable feathers that dart around him in a vortex of chakra, tearing his spear from his grip. Simultaneously, a black sword slices Kakuzu's cheek, and Kakashi writhes out of the suddenly loose hands. But a finger curls around his ankle, and with a shout of pain, his chin smacks into the ground as his feet are swept out from below him. The next moment, he is clutched revoltingly close to the _not-human_ Kakuzu, unable to scream past the heavy hand over his mouth.

As the screeching birds fly clear, Kakashi sees eight figures emerge like silhouettes from smoke. Team Ten crouching by their sensei, Chouji staring in horror, Ino's hands trembling as they flicker over Asuma's wounds; Raido checking Izumo and Kotetsu as he returns his deadly black blade to its sheath; Aoba, arm still upraised, the last of his crows fading into shadow.

Even as the eighteen-month old part of him quails in terror at the dusty smell of decay from the inhuman shinobi who holds him in an iron grip, Kakashi the shinobi smiles. _Everyone is okay!_

Shikamaru forces his gaze from his sense's blood-soaked flak-jacket and curses when he sees Kakashi blink at him, his sharingan eye closed but his normal eye showing his childish fear in its darkened depths. "Kakashi…" Shikamaru hisses.

"What?" Raido says sharply, following Shikamaru's gaze to the tiny tuft of silver hair that protrudes from over Kakuzu's arms. "Is that…?"

In the shadows beneath the trees, Pakkun bites back a snarl as Bull growls beside him. They would have been unable to help in the fight. But now, his mind is burdened with the knowledge that he can do nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop his master being taken.

Hidan spits at the remains of his second symbol of the day, and stalks over to Kakuzu, snatching Kakashi away by curling his fingers through Kakashi's hair and _yanking._ Ignoring Kakashi's gasp of pain, Hidan swings the squirming little form up to his eye level, relishing in the feeling of tiny hands scrabbling at his thick fingers laced through silvery locks. "You know something, gaki?" he sneers, bringing his face close to the one dark eye that is now involuntarily tearing up in agony. "You're not just a gaki. You're a pest." When Kakashi curls his short legs up and kicks desperately at Hidan's chin, he simply leans backwards, and then snaps forward like a snake, screaming at full volume into Kakashi's tear-streaked face, "YOU ARE A PEST, YOU HEAR ME, RETARD? A COCKROACH! A VILE LITTLE BRAT!"

Kakashi's gloved hands hook around Hidan's wrist, pulling in an effort to release the needles of pain lancing through his scalp. Hidan's leer widens as he turns to the others, holding out Kakashi so even Ino, glancing up from her frantic work on Asuma's wounds, can see the tears leaking out from the toddler's right eye as his feet dangle hopelessly and his fingers clench white-knuckled over Hidan's iron grip. Horror and confusion register on Ino's shocked face.

"So," Hidan chuckles, an awful, uneven, mad giggle, "even though all of you are sacrifices to Jashin, I'm going to make this little lump of meat here the first." He pauses for effect, and tilts his head at Shikamaru. "That is, if your captain doesn't go first."

Shikamaru curses. His tactics have run dry. "Use this opening to take Asuma-sensei to Konoha hospital," he hisses at Ino and Chouji. "Heal him as much as you can on the way."

As Hidan swings down and scoops his scythe from the dirt, the extra force on his hair has Kakashi snapping open his other eye. Kakuzu sucks in a breath at the angry red of the Sharingan. _White hair, single sharingan in left eye…but the body of a toddler?!_ Kakuzu has lived long enough to know not to doubt the bare facts. He opens his yawning mouth.

"Hidan, stop."

"NANI?!" Hidan howls back. "THIS IS GETTING FUN!"

Kakuzu's smile is even more horrible than Hidan's. It is only a shadow behind his loose mask, but filled with dark intent. "We're taking that kid back with us," he says matter-of-factly. "That's Sharingan Kakashi, the copy-nin."

Raido makes an invisible jerk at this.

Hidan halts. Despite being a foulmouthed immortal zombie, he, at least, has heard of _copy-nin Kakashi._ "Awww," he whines, switching his grip of Kakashi so he holds him by the back of his flack jacket instead. "I wanted to smush him." Kakashi gasps in breaths of relief, his hands swaying exhausted by his sides.

Raido opens his mouth to voice a challenge, but both the Akatsuki members' heads twitch at the same moment, as if some hidden message sounds in their minds. Hidan snarls a complaint into the skies, but Kakuzu silences him with a word. "We're going."

Kakashi's eyes snap to the treeline, smiling a last eye-smile, _"Don't worry, Pakki…"_

And then Hidan's blow to his neck has him out cold.

With a growl, Kakuzu swings his case about and shouts, "Don't be so hard on his bones, baka, we need to bring his eye to Pain-sama fresh."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. HEY! ALL OF YOU! WE'LL COME BACK FOR MORE!" Hidan yells over his shoulder, where Kakashi is slumped like a rag doll, his mop of silver-white hair startlingly bright against the black of Hidan's coat.

Aoba and Raido start forward, but the two figures have already shunshined away, taking Kakashi with them. The small clouds of smoke waver uncertainly, and then dissipate in a sudden wind from the north, cold and unforgiving in its icy breath.

Pakkun ignores the spikes of pain in his heart and bounds out to Asuma's side, Bull on his hackles.

"Pakkun!" Raido shouts. "What happened? Tsunade-sama informed me of Kakashi's…_condition_, but what possessed you two to bring him here?"

"It was an order," Pakkun growls shortly. "More importantly, Asuma-san…"

Asuma's lips move silently. Pakkun thinks he sees the mouthed word _king._ In an instant, Shikamaru has his ear above Asuma's mouth, listening to Asuma's whispered words. Shikamaru draws in a sharp breath. "So that's why you–" he exclaims.

Asuma nods tiredly, as if the motion takes all of his effort As his eyes drop closed, he forces a last few words past the agony in his chest. "Take care of Kakashi," he breathes.

And then he is still.

Shikamaru flings up a hand and stops Ino mid-shriek. "Quiet," he snarls, startling Ino into silence. Shikamaru presses his ear to Asuma's ruined flak jacket. _There!_ A muted, irregular rhythm, no more than a moth-fluttering of movement.

"There's still a faint heartbeat!"

In the shouts and sobs of relief that erupt around him, Pakkun raises his nose to sniff at the air. There is a lingering scent of his master eddying through the air, wisps as fine and windblown smoke. But the wind blows chill from the north, and a moment later, the scent of his pack-leader is gone.

(:~:)

The way that Naruto had woken that noon could redefine the meaning of a rude awakening. His sweet dreams of a mountainful of ramen and rivers of miso stock had all of a sudden been interrupted by a shriek of _"Shannaro!"_ resonating through the soft fluffiness of his mind. And then Sakura's fist had hammered into the golden spikes of his hair, giving him the dual gift of wakefulness and a concussion.

Well, at least that's what it feels like anyway – like someone is repeatedly smashing a sledgehammer into his brain.

When he was done screaming in shock, he had reached for a certain hyperactive little jounin, to find him, of course, absent. That had sobered him up, and quickly, too. Sakura was quite impressed, actually, at how Naruto had simply fished around for some ice in Kakashi's small freezer and then leapt out the window for the Hokage tower without another word. And she had been silenced by his expression when Tsunade had informed him of Kakashi's rogue mission.

He hadn't howled with mock pain like he had when Sakura woke him that morning. The look on his face was as unreadable as the still surface of a cerulean lake, his eyes holding neither the laughter of his younger years or the simmering anger of battle. Just...grimness. A grim set to his mouth, a hardening of his gaze that narrows his eyes as he bows his head, a motion that sets wisps of blonde swinging gently by his temples. He looks, for a moment, not unlike his father on the night he heard about Obito.

Tsunade has to catch herself before she calls him Minato. "…Naruto, there's nothing you can do. This is something he decided for himself."

"I know." The words are murmured so softly, and in a voice so like Minato's, Genma flinches involuntarily, back on his perch outside the window.

Tsunade sighs. "We don't know why he went after Asuma's team. His mind…from Genma's report, it seems as if he acts purely on instinct. We can only hope that his mind may be reverting, and so his instincts are correct. If he has the mind of a genin, however small he is, he will fare better than with that of a toddler."

Naruto dips his chin in silent agreement. A quiet question. "Where's Ero-sennin?"

"There was an urgent mission to Amegakure he decided to take. He left at daybreak."

"I see." Naruto half-bows, the movement stiff and formal, as if it causes him pain. He turns. "Then if you'll excuse me."

"Naruto!" Sakura calls after him. "Where are you going?"

The answer comes, one bitter word dripping like blood from a fresh cut. "Training."

(:~:)

Naruto fingers the soft, downy grass under his palm. The sky is a breathtaking arch of azure over his head, near enough for him to reach out and almost touch the fluffy wisps of cloud, but far enough that the cry of the single messenger hawk wheeling far above is faint and haunting. Empty. Unbroken and empty.

So.

Kakashi was gone.

_Not that I could do anything about it… I'm not strong enough yet._

But…

Naruto is sure that Kakashi had been on the brink of telling him something important. On that very afternoon before he had turned pint-sized, Kakashi had turned to Naruto and said, almost laughingly, _"Hey, Naruto. I've thought of a way for you to make your own jutsu in an unimaginably short amount of time."_ When Naruto had questioned him further, Kakashi had eye-smiled and replied, _"I'll tell you when we get back home. The secret isn't all that difficult – you do it almost every day."_

_I don't know what that means, dattebayo._ Naruto sighs and brings up a hand, fracturing his gaze in garnet light and sable shadow.

_Shadow…?_

With a shout, Naruto leaps to his feet. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!" At the poof of white smoke, he yells, "I need to ask you something!"

The kage bunshin grins back at him. "Yeah, boss?"

Naruto is beside himself with excitement. "I didn't notice this before, but hey, when you guys poof, I get your memories, right?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Clone Naruto shrugs. "I'm the one who disappears."

"Go over behind those bushes and do something, and then poof!"

"Do what?"

"I don't know, anything! What's the point if I know?"

"Will we get really awesome if this works?"

"YES!"

"Okay." The clone turns and darts into the leaves.

Naruto stares after his clone for a moment or two, his nerves buzzing with excitement. The closest he as ever got to this is when he worked out the rasengan, and is seemed as if a shower of light had fallen onto his shoulders from above, energising him, making all those hard hours of training worth something.

Cerulean eyes widen as a rush of memories enter his brain. "Oh yeah, that reminds me, _I_ need to pee too." _But…this means I can train faster! How many times exactly…but it's exponential!_ Naruto pauses for a moment – maths had never been his strong suit in the academy – but he knows that with just fifty clones, he could train exponentially quickly.

A laugh explodes out of Naruto. He may not be able to do anything yet, but should new intel come in, he is going to be in the front lines, searching for his sensei, with an awesome new jutsu. He just needed someone to explain it all to him.

"Gotta go find Iruka-sensei."

(:~:)

Iruka had been rather shocked when a blonde whirlwind had exploded into the mid-year academy classroom, materialising as his favourite former student in a swirl of leaves. And then he had been forced to tell his pupils to self-study while he withdrew to the corridor with Naruto, who was so excited he'd had to blabber his question three times.

_That_ had led to a rather long discussion on nature affinity, and then a quick trip to his office and a stack of books on chakra nature deposited in Naruto's arms. Naruto had snapped a quick bow, the stack wobbling dangerously, gabbled in one breath, _"ArigatoIruka-senseiI'mgoingtobeawesome!"_ and then disappeared in an eyeblink. Iruka knew he couldn't have shunshined away, because there was no trace of chakra in the suddenly empty air, but his speed had been unbelievable… there was almost a moment when Iruka fancied he saw the Yellow Flash in Naruto's movements.

But the fact that Naruto is Konoha's number one most surprising shinobi had long since failed to surprise Iruka. And he'd noticed Naruto's quiet enthusiasm for certain subjects ever since he had caught Naruto squirreled away in the corner of the schoolyard one lunchtime years ago, absorbed in the teacher's guide he'd pilfered from Iruka's desk and practicing handseals with a look of utter determination on his chubby face.

A carefree smile spreads on Iruka's features as pride for his student blossoms in his heart.

(:~:)

Kakashi wanders the grey towers and ravines of his dreams, wondering why he feels so…_fragmented._ He remembers…remembers a moonless night, watching the forest by starlight, a disturbance in the liquid darkness, blood on his cheek and his kunai, rapidly cooling between his fingers, a flash of light and…dazedness, a body his own and yet not, steps and dances in the world of half-awakeness, nightmares of crimson and gentle voices of sensei and Jiraiya-jiji…

Kakashi the jounin sleeps restlessly, burined in the white and grey folds of his memories, trapped in the world in between consciousness and slumber, a dream-fall shuddering through his mind. And slowly, ever so slowly, he begins to wake, and a little more of Kashi the child slips down into the fortified armoury of his mind.

**Please don't get angry at this! Kashi the kid is still going to be here, only his mind is slightly different. Don't worry; he'll still be adorable. I'll see you guys next chapter, where the Akatsuki will endure hell. MUAHAHAHAHA! Thank you, reviewers, for excusing my insanity.**


	5. In Which Itachi Is Unnaturally Nice

**I'm baaaaaack! Sorry about the three-week gap… The amount of work I had to do over the past few weeks was insane, so I only had the time now to sit down and bash this out over a couple hours. I'm revising like there's no tomorrow. Since the workload exploded immediately after the last chapter I'm going to reply to all the reviews I didn't get to reply to here!**

**Hiichisai:**** Thanks for reviewing! Hope you like this chapter.**

**Adin Terim:**** It **_**is**_** rather convenient for Kakashi to be fuelled by sugar, I know XD This chapter is rather darker…but Kakashi is no less awesome!**

**Wulan-chan:**** Sorry about the wait...accept my deepest apologies. Hope you like it **

**Yungsun:**** Hahaha! I've decided to do away with canon anyway, so anything goes. The war…we'll see about that. *****EVIL LAUGH*******

**VampireDoll666:**** A sugar-fuelled hedgehog knowing what he's doing? Actually, he probably has very little idea what he's doing – not consciously, anyway. Kakashi's mind is far too jumbled – he's been doing the equivalent of living with only his instincts to guide him. But that's what makes him unpredictable enough, I suppose! XD Hope you like this one!**

**Elle:**** Thank you! But actually, he hasn't actually done anything yet… not for the havoc that I'm planning for, anyway. MUAHAHAHA! There's going to be less fighting this chapter – though I do hope I make up for it with angsty feels, though.**

**Perscripto13:**** Thank you so much! I'm really happy that you love lyrical descriptions as much as I do. I hope I won't disappoint this chapter!**

**Suzie1107:**** Hehehe…you'll find out in this chapter. *evil grin* Thanks for reviewing.**

**Thanks for all of your suggestions and comments. You guys are awesome! Onwards with the chapter!**

(:~:)

Consciousness does not always come easily to Kakashi, due to a motely of reasons, nearly all job-related. There had been awakenings so agonisingly painful that each shard of his mind seemed helplessly fragile, jumbled fragments of his mirrored memories that throbbed in sympathy with each tortured heartbeat. Times he opened his eyes only to squeeze them shut again, his left eye seeing nothing but the sable back of his hitai-ate, his right eye blinded by the harshness of sunlight. In those awful moments, he would wonder with a half-laugh whether the sledgehammering impacts on his skull were caused by a concussion or a hangover. Perhaps both.

Water, shockingly icy over his shivering, bloodied skin as the T&I jounin from who remembers _which_ village smiled his crocodile smile and began another ceaseless round of questions as a foreign ANBU reached for bloodstained metal, ANBU efficiency at its best…

Whispered words in his ear as he slumbered, chakra bled out of him, _"The Hokage has fallen…Kyuubi contained."_

So many different awakenings…

A gentle hand on his bare forehead, the fingers calloused from decades of weapon handles and battle scars, and a voice that holds just the right amount of warmth and hidden laughter, without a shadow of the commander's snap, as if this tone is reserved just for him. For Kashi. And he smiles in his waking dreams, his eyes closed but already seeing his father's grinning face mouthing teases at his little son, telling him to get up or Pakkun would give him a good licking…

_Drip._

Kakashi groans as he rolls onto his stomach, the _drip-drip_ of water on stone echoing far too long in his ears for comfort. His tiny hands ball into fists on the wet grey surface. _Drip._ Slow, steady breaths. _Drip._ Don't cry, don't cry…something about a shinobi rule…something…

"So you're awake then." The voice is the definition of even. It is as if a blacksmith had taken a hammer to it and then polished it smooth and cool grey as a misty morning.

Kakashi sucks in a shuddering breath and sets his mouth in a stubborn line – not that it is visible through his mask – and forces open his eyes to meet the empty gaze of Uchiha Itachi.

Itachi shifts his weight around on the simple wooden stool that holds him above the sodden floor and taps a foot against the iron bars of Kakashi's cell experimentally. "I apologise for your surroundings, Kakashi-san, and for binding your power for the moment," he says. "It was fortunate that I managed to intercept Hidan and Kakuzu before they reached headquarters proper. Otherwise, you might have been on your way to Pain by now." The only light in the dim, dank, cell comes from a sputtering lamp at Itachi's feet.

Kakashi narrows his eyes. There is something unspeakably familiar about the way the man tilts his head, and stares at him with eyes the colour of pitch…his voice is like Sasuke's, but emotionless and conversational, unmarred by a desire for revenge. Memory comes rushing back in a torrent of agony and negative colour, of a battle on a river and three days tied to a wooden block as katana after katana pierced his skin.

Itachi does not react to Kakashi's jolt and his perfect flip into a defensive stance. The only difference is that now, Kakashi's dirt-matted silver hair quivers with energy two feet above the ground, not two inches.

"You remember me." Itachi's face is a masked blanker than Kakashi's. "I'm afraid I'll have to apologise again, this time for my…actions the last time we met." His dark hair swings as he leans forward. "Although you _are_ considerably shorter than then."

Kakashi pouts. "I don't like you," he declares.

"Fair enough."

Short silence, in height and sound. "Whaddaya want?"

"I'm curious. What would you do if I set you free?"

"…"

Itachi's lips twitch, sending the shadows flailing in sympathy across his face. "Well, I suppose you can be forgiven for not remembering this, given what has happened to you, but you forget that the Akatsuki are an organisation of mercenaries."

Kakashi frowns. "So why…why d'ya wan' me to help you? An'…what's a merc…mercen…"

"A wandering soldier. And in answer to your first question, I don't. I don't even care what you do once you walk out of here…but there _is_ the chance that whatever you do might go toward my interests, judging by Hidan and Kakuzu."

A pause as this processes into child-speak. "Whaddaya want?" Kakashi half-yells.

"Didn't I already say…"

"NO!" Kakashi shouts, stamping his foot. "I... I mean," he says slowly, building in frustration, "what are your…inter…interes…WHADDAYA WANT?!" This is accompanied by an earth-shattering impact of sandal with stone.

"My interests are my own." Itachi stands without appearing to have moved at all, seeming to meld into the wall until the crimson clouds on his coat stand out stark as blood. A finger touches a rusted iron bar, and chakra symbols flare into white-blue being. "This seal will break in an hour's time. Once you leave this cell, you will be able to access your chakra again. By then, I will be gone." A rustle, and the shadows swallow him whole, the lamp gone with him.

Kakashi reaches for a kunai to stab that meanie in the foot, but his pockets are depressingly empty. And the comforting weight of his equipment pouch is gone from his hip. He can only settle back on his heels, hugging his knees to his chest and wait for that seal to break and the infernal dripping to stop.

_Infern…what?_ Kakashi rubs a cheek. "I don't get it," he mutters into the darkness.

(:~:)

Naruto sneezes in his sleep, nearly blowing a wayward butterfly into smithereens.

Yamato winces, and thinks that maybe he shouldn't have let Naruto work himself into a daze before stepping in. He had been trying to find his Senpai's student, for half a day, before a quick word with Iruka sent him to the training ground. Naruto is curled in a hollow, in the only shade in the wide training field, happily snoring away among the books scattered around him.

Oh yes. Naruto hadn't fallen over with exhaustion after _training._ _Reading_ had been too much for him already.

Although, Yamato admits, reading six volumes of training manuals in half the number of hours _is_ rather impressive. "Naruto. Wake up," he sighs, squatting down beside the orange and black smudge and shaking the still shoulder.

Naruto sits up so fast that Yamato bites back a laugh. The blonde zombie blinks blearily at him as leaves rain down on his shoulders. There is still quite a mixture of foliage and grass in his hair. "Yamato-taichou."

"What're you doing?" Yamato seems on the verge of smiling.

Naruto manages a weak groan, "Training. I don't even understand half of what these books tell me."

Yamato fingers a book as his sharp eyes flit over the cover. "You got what Senpai wanted you to do, then."

"Yeah, I realised back when – hey!" Naruto exclaims. "You knew his plan for training me? Why didn't you tell me?!"

Yamato shakes his head. "It is not my place to teach you what Kakashi-senpai intended you to learn. Training with kage bunshin is extremely taxing on your chakra. Senpai told me because I'm the only one who can keep your furry friend at bay while you train."

"But he's not here, is he?" Naruto yells in frustration. Immediately, he sobers. His hands clench on the fabric of his coat.

"No, he isn't," Yamato agrees tiredly, rubbing the back of his neck with a weak hand. "I know you're worried about him. We all are." He mutters a curse. "If I had only moved faster…"

For the first time, Naruto notices the bags under Yamato's eyes and the way his curved hitai-ate frames his suddenly lined face. He looks as if he has aged ten years in the few days since Kakashi has turned chibi. "Hey…" Naruto begins hesitantly. "Don't go blaming yourself or anything…"

Yamato's gives one of his rare smiles. "Don't worry. I won't." With a grunt, he stands. "Come on. I've got an hour until nightfall to explain chakra natures to you, and then I've got to report to the Hokage."

"Yatta!"

"Alright, first, channel some chakra into his paper. It'll determine your chakra nature affinity…"

(:~:)

"WHAT HAPPENED?" The bellow echoes between the walls and makes the glass windows shiver in their casings. "Let me rephrase this," the Godaime Hokage growls through gritted teeth, "Why is one of my best jounin in hospital and _the_ best jounin we have in the hands of the Akasuki? Will someone," – a fist smashes into her desk – "tell me, in the shortest amount of words possible, WHAT YOU WERE ALL DOING?"

Five shinobi stand before her. Four shrivel slightly under her flaming gaze.

Izumo opens his mouth helplessly. "I'm sorry, Hokage-sa–"

Raido's elbow in his side shuts him up. "I'll–"

"No." Shikamaru's quiet voice somehow reverberates through the chaos. "I'll explain." In a voice as dispassionate and hard as sand, he recounts the mission briefly and succinctly, saying no less and no more than he should. "Chouji and Ino took Asuma-sensei to the hospital," he concludes. "And Pakkun… Pakkun went to get Naruto."

A sigh escapes from between Tsunade's parted lips. "I see." After an indeterminable time, she murmurs, "How bad is Asuma?"

"He was alive," Shikamaru says harshly. "That's all that matters."

Tsunade's fingers flit across her brow. "I'll tell Kurenai and bring her to the hospital."

Shikamaru's voice has a sharpness to it that suggests he just kept himself from snapping. "No. I have a message from Asuma-sensei for her. I'll do it."

"…Very well. I'll see you at the hospital. Dismissed."

"And Kakashi?" Aoba surprises the others by speaking up.

Tsunade turns away. "He's on his own."

(:~:)

Something had tugged at Pakkun's heartstrings when he dropped in on Yamato and Naruto in their training session. Perhaps it was the way Naruto's eyes darkened and Yamato's hardened. Either way, it gnaws at his heart, adding to the guilt churning within. "Let's go see Asuma. The Hokage should be there," he growls.

When Naruto speaks, his voice is hoarse and dry. "Why did Kakashi-sensei leave?"

Pakkun pauses, half-turning. "His friend was in danger. He senses that just like any ninken would smell fear, or enemies. That's just him. It didn't matter that he had the body and mind of a child."

Their quickening footsteps drown out Naruto's first words, but the next few are clear. "What's Tsunade no ba-chan going to do for Kakashi-sensei?"

"I'm sorry, kid," Pakkun answers. "But most likely, she'll do nothing."

"What?" Naruto can barely keep the shock out of his voice.

Yamato's voice is as cold as frozen leaves. And equally brittle. "Simple tactics. We have no idea where the Akatsuki hideout is. We could track them down, of course. But even if we do, what then?" Yamato's commander's mask is sliding over his features. "We don't have the intel to plan, let alone launch an invasion to the scale this would require. The size of the organisation itself is questionable. And its members are all nuke-nin – their abilities must be at least jounin level."

"Shinobi don't have honour, kid," Pakkun snarls. "And they won't sacrifice a hundred men for the sake of one."

"But Kakashi-sensei's a kid!" Naruto yells. "And he's our nakama! We can't just–"

Yamato cuts across him. "He's a shinobi. And shinobi…deal with it."

(:~:)

Kakashi had twiddled his fingers and thought up a hundred different plans while he waited for the seal to open. Most include painting the meanies who had taken him violent shades of purple and pink, but Kakashi the shinobi takes over momentarily, and slowly, a plan began to form.

So when he follows the merest movements of air up a winding staircase – slowly, as the stone steps are far too steep for his short legs – toward the light, he smiles. And disappears.

Kashi stealth mode is activated.

Children are often criticised for eavesdropping on conversations, of seeing too much and hiding in the shadows, being nowhere yet everywhere at once, melding into the background so only a wary eye could ever pick them out. But what they do is what shinobi often do; being the perfect observer, watching and listening without being done so themselves. It depends largely on skill of silent movement, knowing where to step and when, how to blend your profile into the patterns of the space around you.

Being two feet tall helps.

Adults rarely look down. Shinobi might scan their surroundings for chakra signatures, but when the said signature is reined in tightly and low to the ground, it allows Kakashi to pass, quite literally, under the radar. Fingers clenched tight around the flak jacket over his head to cover his mass of silver hair, Kakashi bobs from shadow to shadow, his feet so fleet that the dust remains undisturbed in his wake.

But the shadows are lengthening. A quick glance out a window reveals the red-orange sun touching the horizon, veiled by smoke. A whirring sound trembles the ground beneath Kakashi's feet, and moments later, the dim yellow lights along the walls brighten slightly. He frowns. The balance of brightness to pooled sable has changed; he will barely have space to hide now. Only one solution to that. _Search as quickly as possible._

A wooden in the wall creaks open to Kakashi's chakra tendril. The dim light reveals nothing intereresting – crates of food, a few barrels of…weedkiller? Kakashi narrows his eyes to read the kanji. Apart from the weedkiller, there are sugar sacks, covered buckets of all-purpose thinner – _affective on every mixture from clay to cement_ – rat poison, woodworm eggs _(woodworm eggs?)_, wide spectrum animal repellent, and something called, in bolded letters, INSTANT RUST POWDER.

So. A farming village's storage cave, perhaps, taken over by the Akatsuki. The village must be nearby, but it is unlikely that, given the Akatsuki's presence, the villagers would still be there. But _rust powder?_ That sounded more like a tactical weapon to sabotage bridges than a normal farmer's property.

Kakashi blinks and straightens. A pounding headache has grown behind his eyes. As quickly as they came, the clear, analytical thoughts disappear, leaving him even more confused than before. The inventory is still engraved into his mind, but whatever tactical decision he just made fades away.

_I don't like it here. I wanna go home._

A hiss of movement up ahead. Kakashi carefully, carefully shuts the door behind him – stretching up on the tips of his toes to reach the doorknob – and flits up the wall, attaching himself in the darkness behind a rafter on the ceiling. There is something very strange about the figure as it walks. The shadows it casts are jagged and spiky, as if the person – or thing – casting it barely has the semblance of a human. The figure reveals itself to be a strange, half green half white plant-like person. It waddles and stumbles in its movement, but it wears the uniform of the Akatsuki below its jaw-like head.

Only when it is past does Kakashi gasp in the breath he had been holding. It looks, and moves, exactly like a carnivorous plant. Not daring to look back at the turning in the corridor where the _thing_ went, Kakashi breaks into a run.

Night has fallen true and proper as the little silver-lined shadow darts down the hallway, not caring which turning he takes and where he is heading, a ghost that sees much and hears much. A puppet like-figure, human and _not_; a blue-skinned man who smells of shark – _Kisame?_; a blonde-haired figure kneading clay while laughing delirously; Hidan and Kakuzu, separate but no less dangerous, going about their mysterious activities. Up and down a labyrinth of staircases – the Akatsuki had built well – through endless corridors holding unknown horrors and the scent of blood and vengeance in his sharp nose, running until he flies across stone like a pebble across water and through an open, massive iron door into–

The night.

Sweet-smelling grass under his feet, and the moon far more silver than his hair. Kakashi darts to the cliff in which the entrance to horrors is embedded in, and with speed born of relief, sprints up the grey surface to the top, falling over onto the downy grass there.

He lies there for a long while. There is nothing around him save for the lullaby of a nightingale and the slow tempo of the cicadas. The moon is so close he could almost reach it with his gloved fingers. Slowly, his hands unclench, no longer clammy with sweat.

And the nightingale's lullaby lulls him to sleep.

(:~:)

Pakkun had 'poofed' so that Kakashi would be able to call him, wherever he is. Naruto had plonked himself down next to Shikamaru outside Asuma's room. Tsunade and Kurenai's murmurs filter past the closed door to their ears, but the words are nigh on unintelligible. Ino and Chouji sit on either side of Shikamaru and Naruto, wordless.

Asuma has yet to awaken.

Shikamaru breaks the silence with a single expletive, rude enough for a scandalised look from a nurse across the hallway.

"Shikamaru…" Ino ventures, voice cracking.

"Never mind." With a rustle, Shikamaru stands and paces away.

Chouji stuffs another handful of crisps into his mouth mechanically. Ino turns to him, but when the silence becomes unbearable save for the _crunch-crunch_ of crisps, she sighs. "Naruto, any news of Kakashi-sensei?"

"No." It feels as if a hand is constricting his throat. He swallows. "I understand what you guys are going through. Kakashi-sensei hasn't been himself these past few days, and now… I don't know what'll happen to him."

"But now Shikamaru…" Ino whispers. Naruto surprises her with a laugh. "Why're you laughing?" she says accusingly.

"Because this is the first time you've talked to me for so long without an insult," Naruto replies. "Don't worry," he adds quickly, seeing her lip tremble. "Shikamaru's fine. The way he walked off just now…I think he's coming up with a plan."

Chouji drops his bag of junk food. "Really?" Hope uncalled-for glimmers in his eyes.

"Yeah. And if he thinks up a formation, I want in."

"What?" Ino begins. "Why would you–"

"They've got Kakashi-sensei," Naruto cuts in. "Kashi…sensei." His eyes are narrowed, and Ino finds herself looking into the spitting image the Yondaime Hokage in one of the few pictures of him she has ever seen. "Even if you guys refuse, I'm coming after you," Naruto declares.

"For goodness' sake…" Ino mutters. "Fine. I'll ask Shikamaru when I next see him." For a moment, she seems to fight herself over something. "But for Sakura's sake…" Ino continues hesitantly, "since she isn't here to tell you, be careful training. Asuma-sensei is the best Fuuton user in Konoha, and he always told me that Fuuton chakra is the hardest to control."

"What?" Naruto's eyes have grown as large as saucers. He leaps out of his seat like he can't control himself. "Fuuton? Asuma?"

"Yeah…"

Ino expects Naruto to explode with the pent-up energy inside him, but instead, he relaxes. "I hope Asuma-sensei wakes up soon," he mutters. "I need to ask him something."

"Ask what?" Chouji appears confused.

Naruto's cocky grin spreads. "Something that'll make me awesome."

(:~:)

The morning light is warm on Kakashi's face when he wakes. A warm ball is curled into his chest. A glance downwards reveals Pakkun, eyes closed and piffling softly. "Pakki!" Kakashi squeals happily, hugging the small dog tight enough to make the pug's eyes bulge.

"Oi, oi! Boss! Not…so…tight… can't… breathe…" Pakkun manages.

"How'd ya end up here?" Kakashi laughs.

"I poofed a few hours ago, so you must have summoned me in your sleep." Pakkun makes a face. "I don't even know how you did that." Pakkun shuffles backwards and examines Kakashi critically. "You all right, Kashi?"

That brings on another round of hugs, enough to confirm that Kakashi is, in fact, all right. "Oooh," Kakashi mutters after a while, sitting back against a tree, Pakkun clasped to his chest. "I forgot. I got…I got… intel?"

"Intel?" Pakkun says sharply. "What intel?"

With many stops and starts, Kakashi describes, the best he can, the horrors of the cavern and its inhabitants.

A long pause. "Well," Pakkun finally says, "At least when we return to Konoha you'll have something for the Hokage. She's not happy with you."

A sudden flash of light in Kakashi's mind. A moment of pure, glorious understanding, childish glee and tactical genius. He opens his mouth. "Imma not going back."

"What? Kashi, you've got to. Naruto and Yamato and the rest of your team are worried sick. Naruto's training himself into a ditch."

"I'm NOT!" Kakashi's mouth pouts stubborly. "I got plan."

Pakkun sighs. "And what would this plan be?"

A grin far too evil to fit the normal child's face spreads under Kakashi's mask. "Akatsuki get owned."

Pakkun frowns. "I know that face. No. _No, _Kakashi."

(:~:)

A while later, Pakkun sits in frustrated misery next to Kakashi, who dangles his feet over the side of the cliff has he makes a silent inventory of the weapons he must procure from the storeroom. _Weedkiller. Rat poison. All-purpose thinner – What's that?_

An Akatsuki member strides out of the gates, his raven hair spiked over an orange mask. To Kakashi, he seems _familiar_ somehow, like an old friend, but shakes some chord within his memories, blood and horror and death, and unimaginable guilt. With a yelp, Kakashi scrambles away from the cliff edge and throws himself behind the tree, clamping his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. He can't grasp the name of the person he is trying to find in his memories.

Pakkun nudges him and hisses, "Boss! Boss! Kashi! What's going on!"

A word engraved in forgotten memory tumbles out of Kakashi's lips. "Obito." He doesn't understand what it means, or why he is saying it. Kakashi gasps in desperate lungfuls of air. "Obito."

(:~:)

**Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I know I said that I would put the Akatsuki's pwnage here, but I discovered halfway through that the chapter would just be too long. For it to be as glorious as I want it to be, the havoc would have to be spread over most of a chapter. I'll get it to you soon, don't worry. It's the Easter holidays right now, so although I'm still revising like mad, I'll have more time to write. Reviews are very much appreciated. See ya!**


	6. Art is BOOM

**Here we have it! I felt bad making you guys wait three weeks for the last update, so here it is! In six days! AND LONGER! Hope you guys all love this one, because I put a load of effort into this. Record time for finishing it, though. Four and a half hours of tapping away – I'm surprised I didn't break my keyboard. Thanks to all those who favourite and followed!**

**Wulan-chan:**** I GIVE YOU LONGER. AND BETTER!**

**Rosebunse:**** Thank you for your continued support. It's partly because of people like you who keep encouraging me that makes me love writing.**

**Guest:**** Hey, make up a name to put in the box anyway, so I can thank you in person! Hopefully, what I've done will all those weapons will fulfil your expectations! XD**

**suzie1107:**** Itachi planned to place Kakashi inside the cave so that Kakashi could gather intel on his way out and perhaps wreck it all. He trusted that if Kakashi could do what he did to Hidan and Kakuzu, he would be able to find is way out. And yes…Kakashi was unseen, because he's scarily skilled like that – that's what makes him exceptional! You'll understand everything of you read this chapter.**

**VampireDoll666:**** Thank you so much for reviewing! I felt bad about not giving you enough, actually, so I wrote more. I hope it's satisfactory. *bows in apology***

**Prescripto13:**** Lemme hug you. You're just so awesome. Read your PM. There's too much to say and I can't put it all here.**

**ONWARDS!**

(:~:)

The orange-masked man hisses as if stung. It is not a new sensation to him, pain, but it burns nonetheless. And it is all the more jarring, given his ability to phase through reality according to his will. The pain isn't visible, either, or crushing, like the weight of feet of rock above his head, or agony in his right side, or the tortured knowledge that he is only half human. This is pain he hasn't felt for years, until it seems but a sliver of a forgotten name thrown into the winds.

Pain of the heart.

Uchiha Obito – he had given up that name ages ago – clamps a hand to his chest, for a moment surprised that his heart is still there. He had devoted years to hardening it beyond reason. In that one, broken moment when his eyes had taken in Rin's blood and Kakashi's lightning-covered hand, he had felt his heart burst. It had been an explosion of warmth, like a fallen star that turned cold and pitted within moments, leaving him with but a semblance of emotion. Numb. Numb and frozen.

A semblance of a human without even a semblance of a heart.

So why would it _hurt_ so much? It is as if blood worked its way into long-forgotten channels in gasping trickles, creating a deep-seated ache as it carves out old tracks to hidden parts of his identity again. Obito – _no, no, Madara!_ – Obito nonetheless, rips his right hand off his coat and stares at it, expecting it to be dripping with crimson, but instead finding his long-fingered gloved hand dry. Cold. Zetsu material, inhuman and frostily efficient.

He almost laughs. For a moment there, he had thought he heard Kakashi calling him. No, not the Kakashi he strives to heap revenge upon, or even the ruthless shinobi so far beyond his reach. He thought he heard _Kashi_. Young. The Kakashi he listened to laugh wholeheartedly for the few months Kakashi had attended the academy. Before White Fang and Rin and Minato-sensei…

Obito grimaces. He has allowed himself to be distracted too much already, by a simple _feeling_, no less! He turns to the cliff face, lit aglow by the rising sun, and narrows his eye. Nothing. As expected. As Obito turns back to the sun, he momentarily regrets the lack of warmth on his face, but then curses. _I've gone soft._ He needs to get to Amegakure to give orders to Nagato.

He forces down all connections to humanity within him and melts away.

(:~:)

"Kashi! Kashi! Can you hear me?"

The reply is a long time coming. It is almost a whisper. "Pakkun?"

Pakkun mentally notes the transition from 'Pakki' to 'Pakkun', but pushes it aside for the moment. "Kashi, are you alright?" he asks urgently.

"Yeah… I think…" Kakashi removes his hands from over his eyes and blinks down at the pug. "What happened?"

_Now_ Pakkun is concerned. "You were screaming…'Obito'," he says hesitantly. "Do you know that name?" Pakkun is uncertain of the clarity of Kakashi's memories, or how ordered they are.

Kakashi screws up his face in an effort to remember. "My…fwend?"

"Yes," Pakkun tries to hide his relief. "Your old friend." He doesn't push further. Better to keep the ghosts of the past in their graves. But for a moment there, it seemed as though Kakashi had _shunted_. Shunted so that he seemed more shinobi and less child.

Kakashi straightens and steps over to the cliff edge with the cautiousness of an uncertain child. "Where did he go?" Kakashi mutters.

Pakkun joins him. "Who?"

"Da…man with the…mask-thing," Kakashi pouts. "Didin' see him before."

"You mean when you were inside the cave?"

"Yeah." Kakashi appears thoughtful. All shadow of his tears is gone.

Pakkun sighs and prepares to voice his _firm_ opinion that they leave, again, but Kakashi beats him to it. _Again_. "I wanna follow him," the small shinobi says abruptly.

"What?" Pakkun hisses, alarmed. "Boss, we need to get back. You can't possibly carry out your plan on the Akatsuki _and_ track this guy–"

Kakashi stretches out a small hand and pats Pakkun absentmindedly on the head, forcing down the pug as his other hand scratches his own silver locks thoughtfully. "I stay," he announces.

Pakkun stops struggling, relieved.

Kakashi smiles and takes a huge breath, fixing his fingers into a seal. _"Kage bunshin no jutsu!"_ he squeaks in a remarkably clear voice. An identical Kakashi poofs into existence, wearing as goofy a grin as the first. They stare at each other, cocking their heads in exactly the same way, before their chins droop. "Tired," Kakashi complains. Kakashi-clone nods agreement.

There is a short silence, punctuated by Pakkun's increasingly frenzied breaths, before the pug explodes into a rage all-unsuited to his small stature. "HATAKE KAKASHI! YOU KNOW VERY WELL THAT YOUR CHAKRA RESERVES ARE NO WAY LARGE ENOUGH FOR YOU TO TAKE A LEAF OUT OF THAT GAKI NARUTO'S BOOK!"

Kakashi appears unperturbed. The seemingly-endless reservoir of kid-energy has taken over. "You follow him!" he tells his clone.

"Okay!" Kakashi-clone giggles in return, snapping into a salute. "I'll be going now." He bobs closer to the edge, but freezes with a foot in the air at Pakkun's growl.

Kakashi turns away from his kage bunshin to the still-fuming ninken, and his voice drops into something akin to a chuckle. "Pakkun go too." This is said with a touch of sorrow, but an eye-smile to match it.

"What did you say?" Pakkun's eyes widen. There is a hint of moisture in them, making them as round and disbelieving as polished saucers. His paws dig into the damp ground, making deep furrows in the soil. He sounds defeated.

Kakashi drops onto his knees beside his best friend and pulls Pakkun into a hug, breathing in the distinctive doggy-smell that surrounds the little pug. His fingers clench tightly around the blue cloth on Pakkun's back. "Track him," Kakashi whispers into Pakkun's ear. "I stay." He hears Pakkun's growl turn into a whimper under his hands, and hugs him tighter. "I'll miss you," Kakashi continues, burying his face in Pakkun's back. "You get orange-mask man, and then go home to…together, okay?"

Pakkun doesn't think he can manage another growl past the pain in his throat, so grunts in his own gruff way. He fights out a few words. "Alright. Alright, Kakashi. I'll do as you order me to. I always do. But please," he coughs, "until I make it back, keep yourself safe."

Kakashi chuckles into the blue fabric. "Okay, Pakkun. I pwomise." With a huff, he stands, Pakkun's hind legs nearly dragging along the ground as Kakashi carries him over to Kakashi-clone and deposits the pug into the new embrace.

"Gambatte-yo," Kakashi tells his clone. "You too, Pakkun."

His clone smiles in return. "Ja ne!" Without another word, Kakashi-clone throws himself off the cliff, Pakkun still hugged tight in his arms.

As the silver streak disappears into the woods, Kakashi plonks himself down on the side of the cliff and squints up at the midday sun. A tear soaks into his mask. "Sun makes my eye owie," he mutters angrily, rubbing his eye with the back of a glove. "Phooey."

(:~:)

Naruto is violently awaken by a scream. Before he is fully awake, he had already slammed open the door to Asuma's room. He fully expects to complete a heroic save of a terrified nurse from an enemy jounin, at least, but instead is faced with a tearful Kurenai sobbing with relief into Asuma's blankets as Asuma blinks sheepishly down at her.

"Yo, Naruto," Asuma says embarrassedly, waving a weak hand. "Sorry about the… you know…" He gestures at Kurenai with a grin, but his free hand smooths down her hair comfortingly.

And then Ino's extremely shrill shriek of joy implodes Naruto's eardrums. "ASUMA-SENSEI!" she squeals, running forward to throw her arms around him. Chouji cries openly behind Naruto, his huge shoulders shaking with sobs as he chokes, "I'm so glad…I'm so glad, sensei…"

Naruto opens his mouth to say more, but wordlessly closes it instead. With a small nod in Asuma's direction, he backs out of the room and closes the door. _Best to give them some privacy._ Naruto heads out of the hospital at a run, dodging civilians and shinobi alike as he heads to the Nara compound. He knows neither Ino or Chouji would want to leave Asuma's side, so it falls to him to tell Shikamaru. Skidding to a stop before the gates, he raises a hand toward the doorbell, but it slides open without a trace of his touch.

"Eh?"

In answer to his question, a tall, rather forbidding-looking man steps out of the compound. Nara Shikaku. "He's inside," Shikaku mutters. "Go in before I change my mind and kick you out. It's too early in the morning for this troublesome crap." Two scars score lines across his face, but he smiles with Shikamaru's smile, albeit gruffer.

Naruto nods. "Thanks, Oji-sa…Nara-san." The second part was a quick rewording to Shikaku's warning glare. He steps into the yard and raises a foot–

The bark freezes him to the spot. "Oi! Shoes off or my wife will murder me."

"Suni…sunimasen," Naruto winces, and quickly removes his sandals before padding silently into the house. _ Hey, but Shikaku-san's not at all like his name. Assassin, eh? His wife might just be his prison-warden._ Naruto raises his voice as much as he dares. "Shikamaru!" he calls as the house opens into a garden on his left and screened rooms opposite.

Shikamaru's voice is unerringly light as it sounds just to Naruto's right. "Hey, Naruto!" A screen door slides open to reveal Shikamaru's grinning face. "Asuma's awake, isn't he?" Shikamaru says with as close an approximation to eagerness as _Shikamaru_ could be expected to show. Naruto barely has time to open his mouth before Shikamaru claps him on the shoulder and says, "Let's go. Just let me get something to eat."

Naruto eyes Shikamaru's crumpled clothing and cranes his neck to look into the small gap between Shikamaru's shoulder and the door. Shogi pieces scattered in disarray, like fallen leaves in a gale, but the small table upright, a few wooden pieces set with military precision in a certain formation that sparks something convoluted in his mind–

Shikamaru slides the door shut with a sharp slam. "Oi, oi, stop looking at my house like some sort of weirdo. Hurry up."

"What's the point of me being here?" Naruto moans as Shikamaru drags him away by the collar. "Your genius of a mind already figured out everything, didn't it?"

Naruto thinks he hears a snort of laughter from behind his head. "Yeah, pretty much," Shikamaru says. "Have _you_ asked Asuma-sensei about Fuuton techniques yet?"

"Awww, come on!" Naruto explodes. "How come everyone else always knows more than I do about everything?"

Shikamaru chuckles.

(:~:)

Actually, if Naruto isn't careful, everyone else might know more than he does about _himself._ Sai had gone in search of Naruto and encountered Yamato on the way, who had told him to try the hospital. So Sai had found himself outside Asuma's room, raised his hand to knock politely, and then was promptly bowled over by a hysterical Ino.

As Sai had stepped back to examine the sobbing girl, he had found himself in his usual dilemma of having absolutely no idea what emotion the girl in front of him is expressing and having even less of an idea as to what to do. So he stared. And tried to smile, because that usually works.

And then Ino had started _laughing_ though her tears, and Sai's mind became irreparably bewildered and desperately blank at the same time. None of his books had ever mentioned laughing and crying at the same time. They were bleedin' oxymoronic, for goodness' sake.

So, although his muscles were screaming bloody murder at him, he stepped forward and pulled Ino into an awkward embrace, doing what his books had told him was "hugging it out". What he hadn't expected to happen was her heartbeat went haywire – Sai had been trained to sense these things –before she began to make 'squee'ing noises into his shoulder. And then the door to Asuma's room had opened _again_ and Chouji's mouth fell open as the crisps tumbled from his hands, his eyes wide open in shock and amazement…

Unfortunately, Sai hadn't been taught how to wash his hands of any business, and so is now reduced to holding a still-sobbing Ino beside him in the hallway, quite confused as to why so many nurses are smiling at them.

When Sai thinks it is safe to lean away from Ino's embrace, he clears his throat and asks quite directly, "Have you seen Naruto?"

"What?" Ino mumbles, still sniffing. "He was here a minute ago when Asuma-sensei woke up… Are you looking for him, Sai-kun?"

"Yes – and just Sai, please."

"Why?"

_Now_ Sai has a problem. Yamato had told him never to divulge what he had deduced about Naruto, but to lie to Ino would mean committing himself to some social protocol. Sai realises his face is studiously blank again, so he gives a small smile, hoping to placate her. "I need to ask him about something I'm not sure about." Not entirely a lie, but not the truth, either. Sai is quite sure about Naruto's parentage. He had only wanted to find further evidence.

To his horror, Ino taps a finger to her lips thoughtfully. "Say, don't you think it's slightly weird?"

"I don't know what you mean," Sai replies carefully.

"I mean Naruto of course!" Ino says eagerly. "Don't you find it strange that he's never mentioned ever having parents? I know he's a jinchuuriki and all, but if he was orphaned at a very young age he should have been put in an orphanage, right?"

"I…yes?" Sai hazards, alarm bells ringing in his mind. He shouldn't have bothered; Ino is on a roll.

"And he acts like he doesn't even know his parents' _names!_" Ino huffs, sounding scandalised. "The Uzumaki clan's supposed to be extinct! There's no record anywhere of and Uzumaki looking like _Naruto_, anyway – I mean, he could be the Yondaime's son with those looks!"

"Of course not," Sai says, rather too quickly.

Ino catches on to his uncertainty. "That was only an expression, silly… but hey!" She narrows her eyes at his reddening face. "You're hiding something."

"Of course not!" Sai repeats, more forcefully this time.

"Yes you are," Ino frowns at him. "Wait…have you been ordered not to tell?"

"Uh…"

"No way." Ino's eyes widen in realisation. After a moment, she snorts and rises from her chair, tossing her blonde ponytail over her shoulder. "The Yondaime, huh...you can't hide anything from me, Sai-kun."

"It's Sai! Just Sai!" he protests. "And I've been ordered not to say anything about–" he cuts himself off. At that moment, Naruto and Shikamaru appear around the corner, and with a relieved expression, Sai nigh on flees toward them.

Ino cocks a hip as she watches him run. "I've got to tell Sakura," she murmurs.

(:~:)

Kakashi is ready. His traps are set, each joint greased to lethal silence, simple and efficient in their design and conception, and most taught to him by Jiraiya. Kakashi hadn't known where the memories came from, but had used them to their full extent. He hadn't bothered with chakra strings. If the Akatsuki were all as insanely powerful as Hidan and Kakuzu, the slightest hint of chakra could warn them of the danger, or worse, reveal Kakashi's position.

The twilight air is cooling and still around Kakashi's little form as he molds himself into a windowsill, hoping the contrast between the silvered moonlight and pool of shadow is enough to offset his silhouette. With some reluctance, he had found a can of shoe polish and rubbed it in his hair. He would have liked to henge himself some dark hair instead, but he can feel the drain of his kage bunshin on his chakra, somewhere far toward Amegakure. Best to conserve his chakra for later.

He giggles into the silence. _Time to have some fun._

Kakashi's first prey waddles into the darkened hallway, and pauses. Every corridor should be well lit in the Akatsuki's lair, but this one is not, owing to some quick work Kakashi did with the smallest of Raiton jutsus. The jagged head of Zetsu turns, first one way, and then the other, like creepers feeling the air for a foothold.

It takes a step forward.

The wire snaps with a metallic _ping,_ and grinding noises sound from the end of the passage, and with it, a horrible noise of liquid gushing, the still air becoming a torrent as _something_ rushes down the dark hallway in front of Zetsu, pushing the air before it like a train in a tunnel. Kakashi clambers up on the windowsill, waving to Zetsu as he grasps upwards, swinging into the rafters with a lazy motion, smiling – Zetsu twists itself into the ground–

And is met with a wave of weedkiller.

As the wall of noxious green liquid slams into Zetsu, melting the plant matter away from its guts, Kakashi laughs and hurls a Kunai with an explosive tag toward the river of weedkiller, hearing Zetsu's scream double in intensity. The kunai falls in an exquisitely beautiful curve, the first stars of twilight reflected in the polished grey blade, inked paper and sparks trailing the handle in a perfect arc. Kakashi plants his feet on the side of the beam, flicks a sugar pill into his mouth, and is out the window like a ballistic rocket. Behind him, the paper burns down to the handle just as the kunai embeds itself in what remains of Zetsu.

The explosion is like an instantaneous sun that lights up the stars, its roar trembling the ground as, in a moment of utter, glorious violence, the weedkiller vaporised, Zetsu with it. The curled flames reach clawed hands through the scorched window for Kakashi's ankle, but he waltzes back on a breath of air and rolls into a ball, hugging his knees on the damp grass as a mantle of fire covers the sky above.

And then the flames simply _cease,_ the last sparks falling like fireflies fading into the deeper shadows that only true night can bring. Kakashi slowly uncurls, blinking away the dark spots that dance before his eyes. When his gaze clears, he slowly turns around to find the hallway pitted and burned beyond recognition, stained slimy green with weedkiller and the entire thing still glowing orange-red with heat. Kakashi bounces on the spot, laughing with exhilaration. "Ovaaaakill!" he shouts.

But then a pulse of chakra thrums through the ground, vibrating through the soles of his feet and sending his pulse quickening. "Uh-oh," he mutters, rubbing his sticky hair. A chakra signal of that intensity must only mean that the rest of the Akatsuki now know something is up. Kakashi had never meant to do this quietly, but admittedly, fire and weedkiller had caused a bigger ruckus than he intended the combination to.

The sensible option would be to abort the mission… but then Kashi could never quite qualify as _sensible,_ so he gives his blackened hair another scratch and then plunges back into the lair, leaping from one cooled spot to another like stepping-stones through a river. "Imma gonna play wiv puppets!" he yells in excitement.

(:~:)

Sasori is not pleased.

He'd created a puppet body for himself for a _reason_. As a puppet, he would never feel pain, of body or of mind, so that he would be above all other humans. He would be better, stronger, faster, built to kill. Humans were so _weak._ Sentiment and sorrow could break their bones as much as a frozen winter's night could. Sasori would never break. Wood and metal are inanimate and cold, but far more indestructible than human flesh.

So when the bucket of woodworms upends over his head, Sasori halts mid-step and stares down at himself, fascinated by the wriggling forms. The pests dart toward his joints, the most vulnerable places in his armour. Sasori frowns and exterminates the woodworms with a burst of chakra. As Sasori walks on without further preamble, he wonders whose phenomenally idiotic trick this might be. Hidan's, probably. Sasori wouldn't put it past the living zombie to do something like this, just to enjoy pain that would follow. But _woodworms?_ _Hidan must be even more of an idiot then I thought. The didn't even scratch me._

As Sasori sweeps by to investigate the source of the alarm, Kakashi grins from the gap in the wall where he has ensconced himself, an adorable flash of white teeth in black shadow.

And coating the trails of woodworms, the instant rust powder digs deeper into Sasori's joints.

(:~:)

Deidara had taken a break from his artwork to drink some tea. It had had an unknown _zing_ to it that he hadn't tasted before, but he quite liked it. It was explosive. And explosive meant excitement. And then a toddler in jounin clothes dropped from the shadowed ceiling into a pool of light in front of him, and Deidara had asked him, obviously, a very, very important question.

"What's art to you?" Deidara shouts, stomping forward and sticking a hand into Kakashi's face.

Kakashi's eye widens slightly at the tongue that slips out of Deidara's hand to taste the air. "Uh…art?" he mumbles.

"Yeah. Art," Deidara sounds impatient. "The most awesome thing ever. Art!"

"Art…ano..." Kakashi frowns. "Art is…boom?" he says experimentally.

Tears start in Deidara's eyes. "Yes! Finally, someone who understands me! Art is an explosion!"

"No."

"What?" Deidara sounds shocked. Horrified, even.

Kakashi very deliberately shakes his head. "No. Art not a 'plosion." His thumbs twiddle behind his back.

Deidara narrows his eyes. Lowering his voice into a false curiosity, he squats down by Kakashi and asks, "What did you say?"

"Art not a 'plosion. Art is boom." Kakashi says stubbornly, eye wide.

"Wait. But what do you mean by 'boom'?" Deidara nearly snarls.

"Boom!" Kakashi giggles, jumping up and waving his arms above his head to emphasise his point. "Big and I don't get. Blow my mind."

Deidara's hands ball into fists. So this kid's idea of Art was 'boom' because it blows his mind in complexity. And he had thought he found his new best friend. With a howl at what would never be, Deidara flings a handful of clay bombs at Kakashi.

The clay bombs splat into the ground, far too soft to hold shape. Some fizzle pathetically before falling silent forever.

Deidara stares at his hands, and then raises a horrified gaze to meet Kakashi's. "What did you do?" he gasps. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?"

Kakashi's reply is direct as usual. "All-pur…all-purpose...thinner." He taps a finger to his chin. "I think."

Deidara begins to swell, whether in anger or in chakra, Kakashi's can't tell. "I'LL SHOW YOU REAL ART, GAKI," he howls. "I'LL SHOW YOU HOW MY CLAY MAKES ART INTO AN EXPLOSION!"

Kakashi decides it's high time to get out of there, so leaves by the nearest window without looking back, and then shunshins away.

Into the emptiness behind him, Deidara screams in exultation, "ULTIMATE ART! SHEER PERFECTION!"

The sky turns white with the explosion. It's a wonder why Kakashi needed to step in for Deidara to blow himself up in the first place.

(:~:)

Kisame offered more of a problem. Kakashi knew that he is more shark than man, and there weren't a whole lot of ways to improvise the killing of one. So in the end, Kakashi had gone with the classic method. Electricity and water.

With some adjustments.

Kisame had shown a new side to his personality when he laughed his head off at seeing Kakashi, some way outside the Akatsuki lair (now destroyed by a delirious Deidara). The impromptu chuckles abruptly cease when Kakashi gathers up as much chakra as he dares and shouts, "Suiton: Suiryudan no jutsu!" Twin dragons twist around one another in a raging torrent of sparkling water, jaws gaping to envelop the blue-skinned man.

Kisame opens his arms to welcome them, shouting, "You're using a _Suiton_ jutsu against me?"

Panting with the effort, Kakashi raises an arm, his whole body trembling with exhaustion. His fingers slip into the tunnel of water, and he burrows within himself, separating his chakra, welling it to separate. A mountain of power in one hand and emptiness in another. A difference in the very _force_ that drives him, thrumming out at the tips of his fingers, building until the well of chakra overflows, cascading out of him in a current of warmth and cold. It is an icy fire that lances down the twirling dragons's scales and into Kisame.

But it isn't enough. Kisame the nuke-nin would never fall to so simple a combination.

Closing his eyes, Kakashi does something that only he could be capable of. He variates the gradient with which the chakra within him flows, pulsing the raiton jutsu's strength, the water resonating into a thousand instantaneous droplets with it. As Kakashi stares at his manifold reflection in the sudden rain, he remembers…remembers _his father_, with vivid, painful clarity.

"_Now, Kakashi," Sakumo laughs as he ruffles his son's hair. "I'm going to catch a shark. Not for eating, mind. For a lesson."_

_Kakashi's small hand grasps for Sakumo's hair. A high-pitched giggle sounds. "Sharkie!" he squeals._

_Sakumo dips a chakra-laced wire into the water. "You don't need to remind me – I'll be careful. You're only eighteen months old."_

_A curious question. "Da-da?"_

"_Yes, son?" comes the gruff response._

"_How…how…d'ya…catch…sharkie?"_

It is astonishing. How exact Kakashi's recollections can be. Perfect, whole memories untainted by war. The scent of blood is foreign, unknown. He only knows the clean-smelling scent of the sea and his father's white hair under his hands as his heels tap a chuckling rhythm against his father's chest.

_Sakumo reaches up to steady Kakashi on his shoulders. "Well, Kashi, I don't know whether you're going to be a shinobi someday, but remember this: always go for the enemy's inherent weaknesses." Sakumo seems to sense Kakashi's frown even if he can't see it, and he laughs as he continues, "the enemy's natural weak points. For a shark, that's the electrical sensors on his skin. Use a pulsing raiton jutsu," – his hands send a sparking signal down the wire – "and it'll shock the shark enough that it's like throwing in a flash-bang."_

_Kakashi gives a peal of ecstatic laughter as his father sinks into a stance, and with an effortless flick of his his wrist, pulls a ten-foot great white shark above the water, before then slicing the wire with a kunai, letting it go free._

"_Da-da, you awesome!" Kakashi squeals._

Water droplets explode into countless glittering diamonds as the suiton dragons collapse, soaking Kakashi from blackened hair to trembling toes. Kakashi blinks as he falls to his knees, his hands digging into the cold stone, sparks still dancing between his fingers. It is a strange mirror of the blue-skinned figure some way down the corridor. Kisame shudders as if blinded, his skin no longer azure, but rather a pale shade of sickly cerulean.

Kakashi feels his kage bunshin waver, but he throws down a flash-bang and leaps upwards, digging a kunai into the ceiling and hanging off it, tiny hands clenched tight with the last of his strength. Kisame shakes free of his dazedness and stares stupidly at the bomb right as it goes off.

White.

Kisame's howl is lost in the pulse of energy that ripples through the water, perfect circles that travel in deadly waves into his skin, severing his chakra-connections and essentially killing off all his senses. It is not Kisame who falls face-first into the thinning layer of liquid, but the remnants of a man born of sharks.

Kakashi's hair is plastered to his face, drawing black marks on his filthy mask as he drops onto the stone, his legs giving out under him as he folds into the water, soaked to the skin. He becomes aware that his skin is chilled, not only with the water around him, but clammy with sweat and tears.

His vision is fading.

_No. I gotta go get Hidan and Kaku…I gotta…_

Unconsciousness comes to him as easily as falling asleep.

(:~:)

On the trail after Tobi, Pakkun blinks as Kakashi the clone stumbles mid-step. "What happened?" Pakkun snaps as loudly as he dares. They don't know how good Tobi's sensory skills are.

"Summat happen' to Kashi," the kage bunshin says, looking troubled. He appears entirely unconcerned about the identity crisis most clones should logically suffer from.

Pakkun makes a sound between a growl and a whimper. "We need to go back–"

"No. Imma okay. Kashi okay too." Clone-Kakashi replies. "Track."

Pakkun snarls as he turns back to the masked Akatsuki's trail. He cannot fault that logic. By staying strong, the kage bunshin is an effective meter of Kakashi's health. Their only path is to stay on the one that they were set.

"When we catch up to this orange-masked freak, I hope we get a chance to wallop him," Pakkun hisses between his teeth. _Kashi, wait for me to get back. I'll come back. I promise. Stay safe._

The kage-bunshin gives him an uncertain eye-smile as they speed on their way.

**WHOOOHOOOOO! Finished the chapter in time! YEAH. Next time, Ame and Jiraiya! Pain and Tobi! Reviews are appreciated. Sorry guys, but my exams are coming up and I can't write during the period of time I have them. So for the next month or so I probably won't be updating. I WILL NEVER LEAVE THIS STORY AS IT IS, THOUGH, BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE A SACRILEGE. KASHI IS ADORABLE. AND I WILL CONTINUE HIS ADVENTURES. See you all later!**


	7. Past Demons and Hugging it Out

**I'm BAAAACK! My exams finished last week, so I finally had time to write this next chapter. Word of warning, though, this chapter might be slightly darker than before, because of necessary plot developments. There are still comedic elements though, but if you feel differently, accept my deepest apologies.**

**Summary of the last chapter (since it's been a while):**

**Kakashi made a kage bunshin and ordered Pakkun and the clone to track 'Tobi', who they saw leave the Akatsuki base. Kakashi then managed to take out many members of the Akatsuki, but passed out after defeating Kisame. Meanwhile in Konoha, Ino has guessed the identity of Naruto's father, despite Sai's efforts to keep it secret.**

**Analon:**** Thank you so much for reviewing! In answer to your question, I love how words make music, so I string words together until they make beautiful sounds as well as images. Enjoy! Sorry for making you wait.**

**VampireDoll666:**** Ino can be really annoying, I know…it's only been in the recent manga chapters that she's actually perked up, but her personality makes for great plot devices **

**Prescripto13:**** You're awesome, as usual. XD I wanted to play with the idea of a child with uncontrolled, instinctual power, but by mixing it with his unstable emotion and mind, it gives him unpredictability. That, I suppose, is the integral quality of Kashi-chibi which gives him the ability to surprise his enemies. And Obito… I can't say any more or I'll reveal my plot developments, but you're not that far off. You're scarily perceptive, you know that? Sorry for the wait…hope you like it!**

**Yungsun:**** Thanks for reviewing! There isn't much action in this chapter, sadly, but I promise a load later.**

**Rosebunse:**** Thanks for reviewing…hope I don't disappoint with this chapter…eeep!**

**William de Worde:**** Heel turn? Pish posh, I'll give you more that that! Epic reactions will ensue in the coming chapters! Thank you for reviewing!**

**Elle:**** Thank you for reviewing again! There isn't so much 'cute' Kakashi here, but I hope I make it up to you with fluff and comedy. This was a necessary chapter, and one I don't particularly like, but I had to write it. I'll make sure to add loads more cuteness in the next chapter.**

**Wulan-chan:**** Can't answer that question, sorry! Plot points stay with me. Hope you enjoy this one though!**

**Onyxdove21:**** Kakashi's evil nature is inherently him, and also gloriously awesome. Thank you so much for reviewing!**

**Azfaerydust:**** Epic battles to come! Not this chapter, but expect loads of battles later! Thanks for reviewing, seriously – you're great.**

**Harvestangel99:**** Sorry for the wait – thanks for reviewing, though, helped me through my exam revision boredom.**

**Hektols:**** Thanks so much for reviewing! I hope you like this one – and as for Jiraiya, you'll see. MUAHAHAHA!**

**Saoirse-Inti:**** Thanks for reviewing. I can't tell you how much it means to me for confirmation of what I intended for my chapters.**

**ONWARDS!**

(:~:)

Kakashi hadn't expected death to look like this. Or any form of lucid dreamscape, in fact. What sort of afterlife would appear as an azure plane of water, smooth as glass and mirrored in such clarity as to almost shimmer in the half-light? No path, no light at the end of the non-existent tunnel, no _sound_ save for the crystalline echoes of his feet tapping against the liquid surface below, sending perfect concentric rings interfering with each other in smooth wavefronts.

Threads of crimson and white flicker in and out of being where the waves meet, forming strange, unknown shapes – a porcelain dog-faced mask, a leaf-shaped swirl on metal, a dark red eye that glare tauntingly at him, three spots of black whirling around the empty pupil.

Kakashi stumbles, recoiling from the sudden hatred reflected in those inhuman eyes, confusion rendering him limp. He doesn't understand where he is, _who_ he is, and what those images could possibly mean – they echo with a familiarity that tears at his soul. Desperately he reaches back into the recesses of his mind for a hidden memory to explain – _explain what?_

Burying his face into his knees, Kakashi presses his hands to his ears and lets out a raw throated yell of pure frustration. It is as if someone has taken both his mind and soul and ripped them to pieces, scattering them asunder in a chaotic flurry of broken shards. He is gone. His _life_ is gone. All that remains is this empty shell, the plane of his mindscape azure and dark, a child in a nightmare reaching for a dream.

And then, impossibly, a crystalline laugh.

The voice is so comfortingly familiar that Kakashi almost gasps through his tears. "Who…who…" he stammers through chattering teeth, his hands frozen in the sudden chill, snapping his head left and right but finding nothing save for emptiness.

The laugh comes again, filled with so much warmth that he can feel its caress on his forehead. "I'm here. Through the water." The words drift unburdened through the silver surface beneath his fingertips. "Just step through. I'm waiting for you."

Kakashi presses his palms harder into the cold, unforgiving surface of the water, his mind reeling and the air barely reaching his lungs. _I can't. I don't know where I am and I don't know who I am._

And then a final chuckle flits into his ear, soft as a hummingbird's kiss. "Kakashi. My Kakashi."

He utters a choked cry as the mirrored glass turns to liquid beneath his hands and knees, and he falls through, his eyes clenched shut against the icy flow.

Sunlight flashes golden behind his eyelids, and with it memory and identity. Of course. He is Kakashi. Sharingan Kakashi, copy-nin of Konoha, ANBU veteran and jounin sensei. But how did he end up here? He remembers…remembers a moonless night under a treeline jutsu slamming across his chest, being _unravelled,_ flashes of lightning and orange and red clouds on sable and now…

A hand slips around his cheek. His mask is gone. "Kakashi," the voice chides gently, "Didn't sensei ever tell you never to ignore your teammate?"

Kakashi forces his eyes open, barely registering the absence of his sharingan as, unbidden, tears flow down his bare cheeks. Staring at the beautiful smile of the brown-haired girl kneeling by his side, purple tattoos dimpling at the corners of her mouth, Kakashi can only choke out a single word, an impossible name.

"_Rin."_

(:~:)

By the time they neared the border of Amegakure, Pakkun had decided that Kakashi - or the clone, anyway – was insane.

Kakashi-clone had frozen, stock-still, on a tree branch a few paces back, his single visible eye quivering as he stared at something unfathomable in the middle distance. Pakkun had leapt back and gnawed worryingly at Kakashi's pant leg as the child curled up against the trunk, sudden tears soaking his mask.

"Kashi, Kashi, can you hear me?" Pakkun had growled, barely hiding his fear. "Did something happen to the real Kakashi?"

The mumbled reply had been interspersed with fits of – _laughter?_ "He happy, Pakkun," the clone giggled through tears of joy. "Rin make him happy."

Now _that_ was worrying. Rin. Pakkun hadn't heard that name in nigh on sixteen years, almost. He knew Kakashi's mind was reverting, but this wasn't what he expected. It was as if Kakashi's emotions were rebounding between the real Kakashi and the clone. And then abruptly, clone-Kakashi had stopped laughing and instead began bobbing on the spot, eager for their tracking to resume.

No amount of coercing from Pakkun could get another coherent word out of him. The baby talk did not progress past the point of, "Kashi vewy happy! See Rin!"

Bummer.

Now, as Pakkun slows his pace in preparation to tail the orange-masked man into the village itself, his gaze flickers over to Kakashi. The clone in all mannerisms and features is unnervingly like the real thing, small limbs and eye-smile included. But strangely enough, he doesn't seem exhausted at all – something very unexpected given the distance they had covered. And although the clone had shown signs of fatigue immediately after the stumble which showed something had happened to Kakashi back at the Akatuki hideout, the clone hadn't poofed as Pakkun would have expected. Rather, Kakashi-clone's steps had gradually become lighter and lighter until, now, the toddler is practically bouncing from tree to tree.

But whatever thoughts Pakkun has flee from his mind when the orange-masked man's scent is joined by two foreign ones. "He's meeting up with someone," he hisses back at Kakashi. "I don't think we should get too close or they'll–"

Kakashi pouts stubbornly through his mask, his shock of silver hair quivering as he tilts his head at Pakkun. "No," he says. "I wanna li'en."

"We'll be heard–"

"No!" the clone repeats, smirking an eye-smile. "Imma ninja quiet!"

Pakkun tries to stop himself from face-pawing.

A giggle, and a whisper. "You ninja quiet too, Pa-kuuun."

(:~:)

Kakashi's state of mind at the present can only be described in one word. Nuked. He vaguely remembers Yamato's shout behind him as the enemy nin threw a last jutsu point-blank into his chest, but the days after remain blurred and terribly confusing. A taste of sugar on his tongue; warm, brown fur beneath his hands; a squeal of delighted laughter – _his_ laughter? – interwined with Genma's howls; smooth senbon in his small, chubby fingers and lightning arcing about his feet, looking up with giggling joy into the smiling face of Jiraiya-sama, his own eye level with the Sannin's knee…

Wait.

Knee?_ Giggling?_ _What had he been–_

"Oh hell," he gapes, mortified features paling.

"I see you've figured it out," comes a teasing voice by his right ear.

His gaze snaps to the girl sitting beside him. "How are you here, anyway? And where _is_ here?"

Rin glances at the warm clearing, an exact replica of a certain training ground in Konoha, down to chuckling river, three worn tree stumps, emerald grass and incandescent sunlight. "Where does this look like?"

"Training ground seven. But it can't be – I don't remember much, but I definitely wasn't in Konoha before all this…" Kakashi's eyes narrow at Rin. "And you're here, my left eye is perfectly normal, I can't use chakra, and this isn't a genjutsu." He pauses. "This can't actually be real."

Rin grins unabashedly and pokes him in the cheek with a finger. "Of course it can! This is just happening in your mind, is all."

"Ha ha ha," Kakashi retorts drily. "Like my mind would be this peaceful." His gaze darkens for a moment. "I'm surprised the demons of my past aren't here." At this, Rin forces him back against one of the training stumps and wipes under his eyes with her sleeve. A faint blush blossoms across his cheekbones. He feels far too vulnerable without his mask. "Rin! I'm not crying anymore!" Kakashi protests. The lilting cadence of his own voice surprises him – he half expected the bitter tones of an adult.

"But you _were_ just now," she chides gently, shifting her fingers to tuck a few stray strands of silver hair behind his ear. "You need to take better care of yourself."

Kakashi winces. He _had_ cried barely minutes before, sobbed out sixteen years' worth of tears into Rin's lap like a broken war veteran clinging to one of the last few fond memories he had of his childhood, which, Kakashi supposes, is quite an accurate description of the entire picture. Rin had woven her fingers into his hair and sang softly over his choking sobs, stroking his bare forehead until, finally, Kakashi stopped shaking with a combination of pain and unrestrained joy at her presence.

He still can't quite believe she's here.

The next surprise had come when he glanced down and found himself not wearing the standard jounin uniform and flack jacket, but rather his old shinobi clothes, navy blue with a white cross covering his chest. His hands were different too, younger, thinner, and searching fingers on his face had found his scar to be non-existent. Rin had pronounced that he needed to wash his 'puffy' face so produced a bucket out of nowhere and filled it with crystalline water from the river. And then he had stared blankly at the reflection of his own thirteen-year old face, unmarked by scars and wounds and masks, his two whole eyes red-rimmed and wavering in the clear ripples.

So. His thirteen-year-old body, then.

Kakashi groans under his breath, catching Rin's hand as she moves to test his cheek for moisture again. He's spent a lot of time recently out of his adult form. "Rin…" he begins uncertainly, "I sort of remember now, but…what exactly was I doing before this?"

"You were being incredibly stupid," Rin sighs, refusing to let go of his hand when his grip slackens. "But for a noble cause. And I think being eighteen months old gives you some points." A groan from Kakashi brings a smile to her lips. "You were _so_ adorable," she adds slyly.

Kakashi yelps and tears his hand from hers, stumbling backward on his tailbone as his eyes widen with shock. "Don't tell me you've been watching my every move since you left!" he half-yells. He doesn't recall being this embarrassed since Obito pranked him in front of Gai and the others when he was ten.

"Oh, of course not!" Rin returns, her cheeks pink. "I... I woke a few days ago to find you a baby. I don't think your subconscious would have been strong enough to let me out unless your mind was…well…"

"Like a toddler's," Kakashi finishes, wincing.

Rin nods. "I don't think I'm the Rin you knew, either. Just a...memory."

"But I'm talking to you right now–"

"I can feel your chakra channels," she interrupts. "Your clone's still out there, by the way. It was about to go when you fainted, but I managed to divert chakra to it. You're using less of it because you're so small in the real world at the moment." Her voice softens, and her eyes glimmer with unshed tears. "If I can control your chakra like that, do you really think I'm _your_ Rin?"

He blinks owlishly at her, mouth open in silence.

She blinks away her own tears.

The question hangs between them like a heat-haze of torn emotion, blown glass scalding to the touch.

The shattering of tension is actually palpable as Kakashi reaches forward and pulls Rin into his arms, ignoring her squeak of protest as he buries his face into her satin tresses. And then he does something that he wouldn't have dared to do back when his mind was the same age as his current body. "You remember everything about me, your life before?" he whispers into her ear.

"Yes," she murmurs, almost whimpering into his shoulder.

"Then you're Rin." His breath is soft against her ear. "I love you."

Rin gasps and tries to pull away, but Kakashi's arms tighten around her. "No. Don't go," he pleads. "You're Rin. My Rin. I don't know how this could have happened, or why you could be here, but you can't leave me again. Please."

"Kakashi, I–"

"I'm sorry," he breathes. His tears are gone, and that seems to be a trigger for the floodgate of words that now spill out of him. "I'm sorry I broke all my promises, to Obito, to sensei, and to you – I keep telling myself I tried, and what I did to you was necessary, but it _wasn't._ They crammed a monster inside you and turned you into a weapon, but you aren't either of those things. I wouldn't have cared otherwise! With Obito gone I didn't want to say anything about… about _us…_ It seemed like I was tarnishing his memory. But you know what?" Kakashi chuckles hollowly. "I was too much of a coward to help Obito sooner back then, and to prevent Kiri-nin from catching you in the first place. And I was a coward for not telling you I love you, even when I knew what you felt for me."

Rin doesn't reply, but the sleeve of his uniform is getting suspiciously wet where her face meets his shoulder.

"Please say something," Kakashi mutters after a while, his voice cracking. "I haven't… I haven't said so much to anyone since Minato-sensei died. I smiled all the time and joked instead. I tried to talk to you, in front of the memorial, but it's not the same – I… I killed you." Perhaps it is the pounding his mind has received over the past few days, but right now, he feels less like Kakashi the jounin and more like his thirteen-year-old self. Less…in control.

And so when Rin speaks, it sends Kakashi soaring, hardly daring to hope. "It's all right," she says. "I chose death myself, for the sake of the village. Don't suffer because of it." Her hand reaches up to cup his jaw. "And you _did_ protect me. You saved me from destroying Konoha as a jinchuuriki."

Kakashi swallows. "I know I've changed a lot… I'm not the Kakashi you knew and you now see."

He freezes as her lips brush his cheek. Rin sighs. "Baka. Didn't you hear me when I pulled you out of that other chamber, the blue, empty one? What did I call you then?"

"You called me 'your Kakashi'," he says in wonder. "I didn't realise." His mind is still reeling from her kiss on his cheek.

Rin breaks away and lowers herself on the wet grass. "You need to rest. Sit down and tell me your story, okay?" She grins. "I'm not a stone, like the memorial anymore; I'll listen to everything you have to say."

For the first time in sixteen years Kakashi feels as if his heart is whole again. Well, not _whole_, exactly, but healing. Definitely healing. His eye curves in a smile, and for once, his grin is dazzling and unmasked.

(:~:)

Konoha is the heart of Fire country, but the rather lyrical image of a single green leaf dancing in tongues of flame is more apt as a description then some might think. The secret had begun with a whisper, no more than a breath of summer wind stirring each leaf and sending tingling shivers down their spines. But it spread, deadly and exhilarating as balefire through each branch of Konoha, civilians and shinobi alike riveted by six simple words that cracks every harsh, bark-like face it reaches into a disbelieving gape. _Uzumaki Naruto is the Yondaime's son._

The secret cannot be called so any longer. But naturally, the subject of the secret itself is blissfully, ignorantly unaware.

Naruto is currently suffering from an immense dose of paranoia. The nagging sensation had started when the lady at the counter in the convenience shop gave him two extra instant ramen cups for free. Naruto had blinked uncomprehendingly at the rather excessively sized woman's tearful smile, before shrieking aloud as she reached forward and patted his head. When he had successfully careened his way out of that hellhole and into the brightly lit street, the woman's words were still echoing clearly in his head:

"_Oh! You poor dear! I'm so sorry we used to treat you so badly – we didn't know, you see? We'll try and make it up to you, of course – extra ramen, free of charge! You need to eat more or you'll never get taller, deeeaaaariiieee!"_

That last part had been a shrill shout after him as he fled. But that escapade is not what plays havoc with Naruto's deductions at the moment. That particular woman had been the ringleader of a group of shop owners who would overcharge him when he was younger, spitting words like _"Demon filth"_ after the retreating child and snagging their own children away when Naruto drew close. Of course, once he became a full-fledged shinobi they had grudgingly ceased their actions, but it didn't stop them from sneering at him whenever he entered their businesses.

So this change is rather…_unexpected._

Naruto had trudged home wearily after the 'Scary shop lady episode' as he called it, but the next morning is far, _far_ worse.

Children run to hand him flowers.

Teuchi tearfully serves him an entire lobster in his breakfast bowl of ramen.

Shinobi he doesn't even _recognise_ bow to him from the rooftops.

And every motherly woman in the streets reaches out to hug him.

Assailed by the mob and increasingly confused, Naruto reaches behind his back and forms a seal. "Kage bunshin no jutsu," he murmurs under his breath. A moment later, twenty Narutos take flight in twenty different directions, scattering the crowd as people chase after different versions in glee.

In the deserted street, a solitary ANBU with hair like liquid gold and startlingly blue eyes behind his porcelain mask jumps up to the roofs above. The ANBU darts between chimney stumps and slides swiftly down wires, increasing his speed on the slick slate tiles until–

A heavy hand slaps down on his shoulder, and cerulean eyes meet sable ones framed by brown hair and curved hitai-ate.

"Nice henge, Naruto," Yamato says, quirking a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "But you'll have to come with me. Hokage-sama wants to see you."

The 'ANBU' slumps dejectedly.

(:~:)

Tsunade finds herself, for the first time in her life, completely and utterly out of options. S-class secrets revealed to the entire village, not even contained to shinobi only…it was a logistical nightmare.

A knock at the door and a harsh "Enter!" later sends two shinobi into her office, one with features wiped carefully blank and the other a quavering mess of guilt.

"Hokage-sama." The dark-haired, pale-skinned boy acknowledges, bowing his head respectfully. He offers no more, simply standing ramrod-straight, arms by his side and eyes staring intently off into the middle distance.

The blonde kunoichi opens her mouth, but no words come. Her shoulders hunch even more than they first did.

Tsunade slams a fist into the table, snarling, "What do you have to say for yourselves?"

Sai gives a single shake of his head. _Nothing._ Yamanaka Ino looks as if she is about to dissolve into tears, but manages to choke out, "I'm sorry, Hokage-sama… it was…my fault, not Sai-kun's…"

"Yes. It was," Tsunade replies bluntly, pulling an ANBU report towards her with vehemence. "Your only excuse is that neither of you knew that particular piece of information was an S-class secret," – Ino gives a squeak at this – "but," Tsunade snarls, "that does not negate your blame."

Another knock. Another growled _"Enter!"_

The Baka's voice rings out, obscenely happy. "Tsunade no baa-chan!"

"Shut it."

Naruto falls deathly silent. For two seconds. "What is it?" he asks exultantly. "A commendation? Promotion to jounin?" Beside him, Yamato pinches his nose tiredly as Naruto shivers with excitement. "OH! I KNOW!" Naruto enthuses, "AN A-RANK MISSION?"

"YES!" Tsunade screams. Shizune winces, rubbing her ears.

"Na…nani?" Naruto says disbelievingly. Ino forgets her tears for a moment and blinks confusedly at Tsunade. Yamato increases the speed of his fingers in massaging the bridge of his nose and Sai…raises an eyebrow.

"I said, yes," Tsunade replies, in a substantially reduced volume. "Uzumaki Naruto, I hereby assign you the A-rank mission of retrieving Kakashi-chibi. Your teammates will be...Nara Shikamaru, Hyuuga Hinata, and Haruno Sakura," she lists. "YOU," – Naruto jumps – "against my better judgement, will be team captain. However, should you under any circumstances deviate from Shikamaru's sound advice, I will make it my personal job to murder you." Tsunade's gold-red eyes flash dangerously at him.

"Yes ma'am," Naruto squeaks, trembling form restrained excitement.

"Let me make this very clear." Tsunade all but throws Naruto a folder. "I only gave you this mission because we received new intel on the Akatsuki. And don't do anything stupid, because I'm not letting you die. Dismissed."

Completely missing the tone of regret in Tsunade's voice, Naruto gives an exhilarated whoop of "Arigato!" waves the folder over his head and shoots out the door.

Sai and Ino are given the full force of Tsunade's glare in the absence of the blonde whirlwind. "You two," she says slowly, grating out every word, "will spend the rest of the week convincing the villagers that the rumour is just that – a rumour. You're both suspended from missions for this week. Hopefully by then, you'll have learned the value of not mouthing off." Her gaze is particularly hard on Ino. "Am I understood?"

"Yes ma'am." Ino's relief is unmistakable.

"Hai, Hokage-sama!"

When the door has closed behind the two, Tsunade turns, finally, to Yamato. "How much damage do you think was done?"

Yamato winces. "A considerable amount. Naruto's teammates would have heard by now. I trust Shikamaru to keep his mouth shut – he knows this sort of secret has to be S-class and it would be far too 'troublesome' for him to speak of it anyway. Hinata would be too shy to voice her concerns. But Sakura…"

Tsunade nods. "She's always been far too impulsive…but she won't blab like Ino did. The team needs a med-nin. Shikamaru should even out Naruto's compulsive behaviour and Hinata would do well as lookout."

"But why this A-rank mission?"

"I had no choice," Tsunade says shortly. "The village is in an uproar. Our only hope to keep the secret of Naruto's parenthood intact was to get him excited enough for a mission and remove him from the village for a while."

Yamato's expression becomes grim. "No, I meant: Why now? You refused Naruto's request to go after Kakashi-senpai the first time he asked."

Tsunade gives a ghost of a smile. "Because then, Kakashi would have next to no intel on the Akatsuki. His mind is reverting, but the Akatsuki don't know that…I was betting that they would be less wary around him, seeing as he has the body of an eighteen-month-old child." She rubs her eyes tiredly. "Call me cruel if you will," she sighs, "but I saw an opportunity to gather intel on a group of nuke-nin, and I took it."

Yamato's face remains pensive. "But to send a group of three chunin and a genin…"

"That's why I'm ordering you to follow as backup," Tsunade continues. "Don't interfere unless absolutely necessary. Into ANBU gear with you."

Yamato snaps to attention, no longer in the guise of a jounin. "Hai, Hokage-sama."

Her last message echoes long in his ears. "Good luck, Tenzo."

(:~:)

Uchiha Obito has begun to think that he has a few rats on his tail. Certainly not an entire team of shinobi; in fact, he would have been inclined to dismiss the traces of chakra as they were so miniscule they didn't even qualify as a chakra _signature_, except for a certain sense that something isn't sitting right with him. There are no foreign scents in the air, barely currents of wind at all.

Unless his tracker is tiny.

Obito dismisses the thought as he slides down the side of a nondescript building to a silent stop on top of a massive drainage pipe. He would have liked to enter by other means, but Pain was the 'official' head of the Akatsuki and Obito couldn't have intel saying otherwise. Uchiha Obito dead, and Tobi juvenile – he would have to maintain that façade for a while longer.

He does not offer much in terms of greeting to the two figures across from him. "Pain. Konan."

"Tobi." Twin rinnegan stare back at him. "Orders?"

"Yes. It is almost time to make our move against Konoha and capture the Kyuubi. Can I trust you in this, Pain, Konan?"

Pain nods jerkily. Trust isn't something the Akatsuki commonly mention. "When shall we mobilise?"

"I will have Zetsu inform you at the time."

"Very well."

Obito tilts his head so his sharingan glares, an angry red, straight into the circled violet orbs of the rinnegan. "I'll need to speak to Nagato, as well."

"No. This is enough." Surprisingly, it is Konan who steps forward. "You've spoken to him through Pain."

Obito is suddenly aware of five other chakra signatures surrounding them. One below, in the depthless waters, others above and to the side, hidden beneath eaves and behind pillars. Paths. Unfazed, he simply steps further foward and stares intently at Pain.

A long, shivering moment, the energy in their glares crackling the air between them.

"Konan. Take Tobi to where I am." Pain says emotionlessly.

Konan wordlessly motions to Obito, who waves her away. "I already knew were you were, Nagato," he says. "I only asked so you wouldn't try to kill me if I visited. Not that you could."

Pain does not answer as reality distorts around the masked eye and whirls, warping 'Tobi' into nothingness.

There is silence save for the drip-drip of rainwater and the muffled roar of torrents rushing through the surrounding pipes. Kakashi the kage bunshin frowns in the empty pipe he had sequestered himself in, even as Pakkun gives a muffled curse beside him. Notwithstanding the unknown jutsu the subject of their tracking has performed, there is no clear way to track Tobi now, as the scent trail has ended. Mud drips into Kakashi's hair from the roof of the pipe, but the discomfort is barely noticeable to the toddler, who relishes in the slimy wetness as only a child can.

"Kashi," Pakkun hisses. "Our job's done. Let's go."

"Oookay Pakkun," Kakashi replies, pouting slightly. Tracking was _fun_, so poofing and returning his memories to the real Kakashi doesn't seem enjoyable at all.

And then a development to the scene, one that has both Kakashi and Pakkun frozen.

Konan tilts her head, paper flaking off her like playing cards, stirring in a sudden breeze. "Pain."

"Well?"

"It's Jiraiya," Konan says. There is recognition in her voice, and something else, but Kakashi is still too young to analyse what that is.

"Jiraiya-jiji? Kakashi says confusedly to Pakkun. "What he doin' here?"

Pain narrows his eyes at Konan. "I see. Jiraiya-sensei, eh? How nostalgic…you don't have any lingering attachment to him, do you?"

"Naturally not. What next, Pain?"

What strikes fear into Kakashi's heart even more than before is how blandly Pain answers: "Kill him, of course. Eliminate him if you can."

At a

Kakashi's fingers dig into the muck at the bottom of the pipe, desperately confused and horrified. He doesn't understand. "Pak-kun…" he whispers, "Why…why does that man wanna kill Jiraiya-jiji?"

"He's an Akatsuki member, Kashi," Pakkun replies harshly. More harshly than he intended, out of worry for the Sennin.

"But…but…a sensei…is like a… a daddy! Why would he wanna kill his sensei?" Kakashi asks hollowly.

"Never mind that," Pakkun mutters. "We need to get to Jiraiya-sama quickly." Indecision tugs at his heart. They cannot leave Jiraiya to face Pain and Konan alone. Kakashi is a clone, but as memories transfer, whatever trauma the clone experiences would be transferred to the real Kakashi…and Pakkun would do anything to protect his pack-leader.

And his pack leader, at the moment, is but a puppy.

**DUN DUN DUN! Next chapter, JIRAIYA! I'll update in a week or so. Reviews please?**


	8. Kashi's Infallible Sense of Logic

**WHOOP! I wrote this chapter in record time, because I lazed off after the last update and didn't write anything for the first couple days. I really enjoyed this one, though, because I get to weave plot threads, there's finally a chance for some action, and fluffy fluff fluff.**

**Summary of where the plot is:**

**At the moment, Kakashi is happily reuniting with Rin in the confines of his mind, Kakashi-clone is in Ame with Pakkun, Jiraiya is about to face Pain and Naruto has been given an A-rank mission to track Kakashi-sensei with his team of Shikamaru, Sakura, and Hinata.**

**harvestangel99:**** Thanks for reviewing again! It was sort of a relief, actually, because I didn't like the last chapter so much, but the fluff there is nothing compared to the fluff in this chapter!**

**Rosebunse:**** Don't worry, Kashi gets wow moments in this one. And the fluff is sort of an apology for it being so angsty before…**

**VampireDoll666:**** I thought that at first too, but I realised that if they could order the villagers to keep a secret like a jinchuuriki's presence, they would be able to in this case. Not to mention it's going to be called a rumour now. Yup, Ino can't be trusted with anything, but perhaps she could be made to grovel enough that it should be fine. They're not the only ones spreading the news that the entire thing was a rumour, anyway, so it should be okay… and I've still got plot stuff planned. **

**Prescripto13:**** Perceptive, perceptive… XD Some of what you suggested I've already planned, but as for the rest, you'll have to see for yourself! As always, I value your comments greatly. As I said before, they're scarily perceptive, funny, insightful and intelligent. needs more people who review like you. Hope you like it XD**

**William de Worde:**** Thanks for reviewing! I'll admit it… I love making my readers laugh in one paragraph and then cry in the next. The unpredictability means that even a depressing chapter will have comic relief of sorts. I wish I could write more in the summary, but since the main premise of this was comedic anyway, I decided to keep it as is. I hope I did Kashi justice in this chapter.**

**azfaerydust:**** Awww, lemme give you a hug. I hope I don't make you cry any more, but I'll take it as a compliment that you did! The fluff goes to new levels in this one, so I hope it fulfils your expectations.**

**Priest of Pain:**** Thank you for that wonderful review. I like mixing different themes, so comedy/angst/comfort/action is something I do a lot. I'm really glad you liked it, though, because I have not idea what readers like and don't like most of the time. I did have a little laugh at myself when I wrote that bit about the storeroom, though, because it WAS a little too convenient… and Kashi remarked so. And about fixing it… I'm evil, so we'll see. Muahahaha!**

**Osprey Eamon:**** Thanks for reviewing! I don't have anything else to say except… PREPARE FOR MORE FLUFF!**

Jiraiya had expected any number of things to happen when he entered the cavernous mass of pipes. Certainly, each shadow could hold an Akatsuki and the inconstant _drip-drip_ of sewer water was perfect as cover for movement. His manipulated shadow jutsu in taking over the body of this Ame nin would never fool any jounin or above – it was simply a way to get past the rats of genin and chuunin until he got to the 'big boss dude'.

So when a filthy, small mass cannonballs into his chest, he instinctively tears it from him and whips out a kunai.

The ball of mud squeaks in shock as it slams into the ridged surface of a pipe, and Jiraiya glimpses silver strands of hair caked in stinking dirt. Ever so slowly, Jiraiya picks out shapes in the formless, pooling refuse heap. A small hand, flexing chubby fingers to rub at a sandaled foot; the edge of a tiny flack jacket, so grimy with silt that the original colour is indiscernible. And then the gloved hand reaches up to wipe mud off a metal hitai-ate…

A hitai-ate with the curled leaf of Konoha etched into its dulled surface.

Jiraiya drenches the filthy _thing_ in a water jutsu. It splits into two very, very, recognisable forms. A child and a dog.

Jiraiya's eyes widen with growing horror as a soaked Kakashi-chan reaches up to him with short arms and says tremulously, lip trembling past his torn mask, "Jiraiya…Jiraiya-jiji," before collapsing into tears.

The next moment, Jiraiya has gathered Kakashi into his arms, mud and all, and squeezes him in a hug so fierce that Kakashi's sobs are all but silenced into his coat. "Kakashi! I'm so sorry for throwing you," he says soothingly, rubbing the bruise that has begun to form at the base of Kakashi's neck. Jiraiya glances past the heaving form in his embrace to a little brown pug by his feet, and mouths, _"He's a kage bunshin, isn't he?"_

Pakkun nods affirmative, and shakes himself dry.

Jiraiya takes a deep breath. "WHAT ARE YOU BOTH DOING HERE?" he bellows. Immediately, he notices how Kakashi shrinks in his arms, and lowers his voice. Slightly. "Kashi, how did you recognise me?" Jiraiya asks. He had almost forgotten about his henge.

But Kakashi seems to have a more important message for him.

"Ji..jiwaya-jiji…" Kakashi mumbles, voice still thick with tears, "Akat…Akat…"

"Akatsuki?" Jiraiya feels premonition icing his veins. "Are they coming?"

Kakashi barely manages a small nod before wrapping his arms around Jiraiya's neck and burying his face into the sennin's collar. "Purple eyes," he sobs. "Dead."

Jiraiya grimaces; he doesn't understand. He places Kakashi on the ground for a moment as he cancels his manipulated shadow jutsu, emerging from the Ame nin's shadow hitting the back of the his neck to knock him out. It would be pointless to continue wasting chakra on manipulating the Ame nin when the enemy so obviously knows who he is. He gives Kakashi a pat on the head, and then stuffs him gently into an empty pipe, nudging Pakkun in front of him. "I don't have time for this," he mutters. "Pakkun, is the real Kakashi safe?"

Pakkun averts his eyes.

"Well, his kage bunshin is still here, so he can't be injured that badly…" Jiraiya murmurs. He curses. "They're coming. Pakkun, I don't know what you two are doing here, but you are _not_ to join in the fight, alright? I don't need Kashi to have those horrifying memories. If I look like I'm losing, Pakkun, tell the clone to poof and then you return to the real one's side. I don't know whether the real Kakashi is strong enough to summon you again, so you'll have to run all the way back to him. Understood?"

"Yes, sir." Pakkun nods.

"Otherwise, let me deal with this trash, and then I'll come with y–"

Movement above, soft as rustling paper.

Jiraiya barely has time to note that it _is_ paper before a flurry of sheets rain down on him, blurring his sight in a blizzard of snowy white. One piece of paper as large as a playing card grazes his arm, and comes away red. Clapping a hand over the shallow cut, Jiraiya pivots on his wooden clogs and spits out a thin stream of fire that expands into flame bombs, consuming the whirlwind of paper like tinder in a forest blaze.

In the short silence, Jiraiya flexes his stinging arm, well aware what would happen should he have been caught by the entire cloud. _Death by papercut_, he muses. _Hilarious._

When the steam from his jutsu clears, a single figure steps forward, its outline blurred and flaked. Jiraiya begins to smile. "Konan," he says conversationally. "I'd heard you'd died… but you've honed your jutsu magnificently. And you've become quite a catch!" His smile slips, though, when he voices his question. "So who is Pain?"

The blue-haired woman tilts her head, cracking the rough paper on her cheeks. "That does not concern you, sensei." And then to add to her rather ridiculous appearance, the lower half of her body flakes away to form white wings, allowing her to hover. Her next words are as blank as her expression. "I have been given orders from him. I will kill you." Her wings shiver in a sudden gust of wind.

A single feather of paper detaches and drifts away.

And then a thousand paper senbons dart down in a deadly rain towards Jiraiya.

Jiraiya sighs as he rolls away, wooden clogs clattering on harsh concrete as he comes up, a mouthful of boiling oil ready to spit. _Gama Yudan._ Oil, thick and vicious, turns paper needles into mush and covers Konan in sticky tar. The next moment, Jiraiya's hair transforms into a whip of sharp strands that encircles Konan in a vice-like grip. "Your paper can't peel away now," he says. "What happened to the gentle girl who loved origami?" When Konan remains silent, Jiraiya continues unperturbed. "Which of the other two is Pain?"

Konan's voice is empty. Empty and soulless. "Why did you come here now?"

"That isn't my question."

"You should have listened to Orochimaru and let us die."

"…"

Konan's lips curve into a smile, a semblance of emotion. "You're thinking about it, aren't you? Do you feel any guilt at this?"

Jiraiya stares up at her, unreadable.

"It doesn't matter," she says. "You saved the three of us and we embraced Pain's ideology."

Jiraiya's voice is low and barely controlled when it comes. "I don't know what you guys did after I'd heard you died, but I _do _know what the Akatsuki are doing is wrong."

The next words come from further above, where the weak sunlight sends daggers into Jiraiya's eyes. But far colder is the voice itself, chilled ice mixed with rain. "But this is what I've thought through on my own…Jiraiya-sensei." A puppet with horrifying features freefalls downwards, appearing darker and more menacing as it leaves sunlight for shadow. Piercings stand out dirty black against pale skin, as stark as they look painful. A fitting name, _Pain._

Kakashi hisses inside his pipe. "That…that not the same Pain," he whispers to Pakkun beside him. The Pain he saw talking to the swirl-masked man had had spiky orange hair. This one has a mane of light-coloured hair pulled back in a ponytail, and the rods embedded in his skin are slightly different, though no less horrifying.

Jiraiya feels a shiver run through him as he squints past the glare of light to the figure he knows as Pain. "Purple eyes…" he murmurs to himself, recalling what Kakashi had choked out barely minutes ago. _Not just purple eyes. _"Rinnegan," he breathes. "Your outward appearance has changed a bit," Jiraiya begins, raising his voice, "but from those eyes of yours…it's really you, isn't it, Nagato?"

The rinnegan flashes as a hand slams into the ground. "Kuchiyose no jutsu!"

Jiraiya dances backwards, and grimly contemplates how a person's character can often be judged by the appearance of his summons. Pain is no exception; his summon looks somewhat like a cross between a cockroach and a lobster. _Not the prettiest thing in the world. _Then a wave of foam pours out from the summon and Jiraiya curses as it washes away his oil. _Trust my students to know how to defeat me…_

A hand seal and a whispered word later, his art of the raging lion's mane stiffens his hair into innumerable sharp spikes that slam against Pain with a deafening clash of spear against metal. Though dealing little damage, it would at least shut him up until Jiraiya could ask an important question.

"What happened to Yahiko?"

Pain carelessly shrugs off the curtain of hair so he can speak. "Ah, there was such a person…but he died a long time ago."

Jiraiya fights down the sudden spike of grief within him and asks, "What happened to you?"

"War."

"But–"

"Children experience pain. Through pain, they become adults."

"Adults don't abandon their nakama," Jiraiya growls.

"I have moved towards the divine…become a god. A mere human like you, sensei, cannot comprehend this."

Jiraiya swallows his anger and listens on.

"I will accomplish as a god what humans cannot. I will gather all the bijuu…create a weapon so great it could destroy a whole country. Through pain, the world will live in fear. And this fear will foster peace–"

At this moment, a voice, small but startlingly clear, breaks through Pain's monologue with two simple words.

"Dat stupid."

For once, Pain is so shocked his rinnegan takes a moment to focus on the tiny person who spoke in that tiny voice.

Kakashi brushes mud off himself as he straightens proudly, ignoring how Pakkun nips at his sandals fearfully. "Dat stupid," he repeats.

Jiraiya reaches toward him. "Kakashi–"

Pain's voice breaks in. "Let us hear what he has to say, Jiraiya-sensei."

Kakashi takes a deep breath. "I don' really geddit," he begins slowly, "but pain not peace! Pain _hurts._ War is bad." He nods sagely.

If Pain could make expressions with his features it would have been one of infinite amusement.

"So!" Kakashi continues seriously, "Your plan don't make lo…logi…"

"Logical sense?" Jiraiya offers.

"Yes!" Kakashi says happily. "Dat."

"Gotta agree with you, kid," Jiraiya says.

Konan narrows her eyes behind Pain, but Pain silences her with a wave. "What right does a child like you have to speak to me, a god?" he declares.

Kakashi's single dark eye is uncannily perceptive as it takes in the inhuman face of Pain. "No," he shakes his head.

"No?"

"You not a god," Kakashi says plainly.

"What?" Pain's disbelief is heard, for once, completely through his voice.

"You not human," Kakashi offers, pointing at the rods stuck through Pain's skin. "But you not a god."

"Gaki, I could reach out right now and kill you, spare you from the pain of growing up. If I am not a god, then what am I?"

Kakashi frowns. "You very strong! Hokage strong too… but da Hokage ent a god. Jiwaiya-jiji ent a god." A sudden smile adorns his features, pure as distilled sunlight. "Jiwaiya is…my jiji!"

Jiraiya chokes back a laugh as Kakashi totters over to him and wraps short arms around the sannin's leg. "Not scared of you," Kakashi says proudly as he grins up at Pain. "You just a…a monster."

Pain seems lost for words, anger pulsing behind his circled violet eyes.

Kakashi's final whisper. "…and you stupid."

A growl of anger escapes Pain's lips as he reveals his use of kawarimi to escape Jiraiya's jutsu, appearing behind the sannin and reaching for Kakashi with clawed hands. "I'll show you pain, Gaki," he murmurs. "True pain…"

(:~:)

Naruto seethes.

Years ago, he would have left the seething up to people like Sasuke, but given that his best friend/rival chose to become a nuke-nin instead, nobody else in Konoha could take up the title of Top Angster. But he has a nagging feeling that something is being kept from him even as he leads his team further towards the border of Fire country.

Last of the group, Hinata notices the slight slump in Naruto's running position and immediately understands. She could read any of Naruto's movements – she knows him too well. But the revelation that his father is the Yondaime had shocked her to the core. She'd always known Naruto could be royalty…he'd certainly acted like royalty to her eyes. But her shyness and her guilt and her secrets gnaw at her heart, and above all her love for him. She would not do anything to hurt him, S-class secret or not…but would _not_ telling him hurt him more?

Sakura, directly behind Naruto, is completely unaware that Hinata's silent war is eerily similar to her own. Ino had told her first about Naruto's parentage, mere minutes after Ino had found out herself. At first, Sakura had dismissed the notion, but as the rumour spread, she was shocked to find herself slowly believing it. _Naruto's father is the Yondaime._ She badly wants to tell Naruto herself, but Tsunade had ordered their utter silence in a private briefing of the team, Naruto excluded.

Shikamaru, of course, is the only one in the entire team who is not silently angsting about the issue. He had set Hinata as rearguard, Naruto at the front as team captain, Sakura behind Naruto as attacker and himself behind Sakura to offer backup with his jutsus, should an ambush occur. And Tsunade had ordered him not to say anything related to the Yondaime, and so he would not. Simple as that.

Up ahead, Naruto suddenly stiffens.

"What is it?" Shikamaru asks. He can tell it is something serious, simply by the way Naruto's pace lengthens.

Naruto's voice comes raspy. "Sasuke."

Sakura sucks in a sharp breath.

"One of your clones just encountered him?" Shikamaru asks calmly. Naruto had sent out clones, as Shikamaru suggested, to scout for tracks.

"Yes."

"What are you going to do?"

Naruto's reply is strained. "Nothing. He's not part of our mission."

Sakura opens her mouth to protest, but is silenced by Shikamaru's answer. "That depends," Shikamaru shouts into the wind. "What was he doing when your clone found him?"

"He was travelling pretty fast," Naruto says in a monotone, as if trying to hide the emotion on his features that face away from them. "There were three other shinobi with him. He looked like he was hunting something."

"Stop!" Shikamaru yells. Four pairs of feet sink into bark, chakra holding them firmly onto branches and trunks. "Naruto," Shikamaru says urgently, "a few months ago, we received information that Orochimaru was dead, remember?"

"Yeah, so?" Naruto replies, looking away.

"So Sasuke's not bound to Orochimaru anymore," Shikamaru hisses. "What was his aim when leaving Konoha in the first place?"

"To get stronger, so he can kill Itachi," Sakura answers. She looks on the verge of tears, but her voice is hard.

"Itachi's part of the Akatsuki," Shikamaru says. "Now Orochimaru isn't controlling him, he must be hunting Itachi. Itachi might not be at the Akatsuki base exactly, but he can't be far if Sasuke knows where Itachi's staying definitely."

Realisation dawns on his teammates' faces. "So…" Hinata says, "we can follow him to get to the Akatsuki base?"

"Yes." Shikamaru grins. "We'll get Kakashi-sensei back. And while we're at it, Naruto, if it doesn't interfere with the mission, we can find Sasuke."

"Yatta!" Naruto yells, punching the air. "Let's go, dattebayo!"

(:~:)

"I wonder how my clone's doing," Kakashi muses as he stretches out on the grass. His thirteen-year-old body is not anything like his usual one, but it _is_ far better than his eighteen-month-old one. The sunlit training ground around him is ruffled by a breeze.

Rin laughs from somewhere on his left. "It's probably all right… you sent him off after that masked man, you said?"

"Yeah…" Kakashi says. "With Pakkun." Suddenly, he tenses. "The masked man, Tobi..." he murmurs, "I've just remembered…he reminded me of Obito."

Rin sucks in a breath. "No."

"But–"

"_No,_ Kakashi." Her voice trembles.

A pause.

"Why haven't I woken up yet?" Kakashi says, changing the subject.

"I don't know," Rin replies. "I think since all your spare chakra is being diverted to your kage bunshin, you won't wake up until your clone poofs and returns back to you. Until then, you're stuck in this mindscape."

"I don't like how my body is stuck out there in a flooded corridor of the Akatsuki base."

"Kashi-kun," Rin says suddenly, "I think I know how I'm here."

"Eh?"

"When I was hit by your Raikiri" – she winces at his expression – "The bijuu inside me tore my chakra apart as it died, and I think a part of my chakra passed into you."

"A transferred chakra seal?" Kakashi turns his head to gaze at her. "Maybe."

"I'm not sure," Rin says, fiddling with the daisy chain in her fingers.

Kakashi's hand slips into hers. "It doesn't matter," he says, grinning. "You're here."

"I take it you stayed single, then," she giggles.

"Yeah." Kakashi wishes for his mask – he knows his blush is all too visible on his unmasked face. He lapses into contented silence, closing his eyes.

"You know, you've told me about your life, and I think… I think you did an awesome job of it," Rin whispers.

Kakashi's eyes snap open. "I don't think so," he says, expression unreadable.

"No, you really tried your best. You'd be happier, I think, if you tried to bury your dead…"

"I couldn't bury you. Or Obito. Or Otou-san." Kakashi retorts.

Rin's fingers become still in Kakashi's hand. "Kakashi," she says hesitantly, "I don't think I'm the only one who transferred chakra to you."

"What?" Kakashi's tone of disbelief is unmistakable. He sits up so fast his head swims from the motion.

Rin continues guiltily, "Once, when you were injured, Minato-sensei found a seal on your chest. It's hidden, so only a seal master could find it. He told us not to tell you."

"Who…who do you think…" Kakashi asks, barely daring to hope.

Her next words strike his heart with a mix of dread and jubilation. "It…It was etched with white chakra."

"Rin," Kakashi croaks, voice failing under weight of emotion, "you're controlling my chakra right now. Could you…would you…?"

"Are you sure you want to?" she murmurs, worried.

"I won't forgive myself if I don't try," Kakashi replies. "It's better to know than to stay in the dark."

"Alright," Rin says after a moment. "Lie back." Kakashi complies immediately. "Okay," she mutters, hands pressed over his heart, "I'm going to feed a little of your chakra into this seal. Remember that your body here takes whatever form or age that most matches a situation." She grins down at him bravely. "You look thirteen now because that's the age you were when you spent most time with me."

Kakashi opens his mouth to speak, but her lips move soundlessly and white chakra flares from his chest, blinding them both for an instant.

When the glare fades, Kakashi blinks away spots in his vision and groans, "That didn't feel so bad." The squeak of his voice freezes him momentarily. Hurriedly, he presses his hands to the grass and rises to his feet, shaking Rin's shoulder. "Rin. Wake up."

Rin's eyelids flutter open, and when her gaze focuses on Kakashi, a laugh explodes out of her. "Kashi, you're tiny!" she says breathlessly. She towers over him.

Kakashi looks down at his hands and stamps a foot angrily. "I look like a toddler again. Ugh. What's the point of being two foot high?" He takes a step forward. "My centre of balance is all off, too," he adds squeakily.

Rin wipes away tears of mirth, but then her eyes find something behind Kakashi, and the blood drains from her face.

A commander's voice, softened only in such a manner as Kakashi knows, drifts down to him from behind. "Kashi?"

Kakashi's world suddenly seems splintered, breathless, icy cold and painfully burning all at once, the very air shards that cause agonising heat to flow down his little limbs and root them in place. He won't move. He _can't_ move. A scent, familiar and warm, flickers under his nose, reminding him of quiet moments at home, trips to fishing and training expeditions under baking sun and pouring rain. It is so constant and such a comforting _presence_ that Kakashi nearly forgets to breathe.

He can't move.

But he doesn't need to.

Strong hands wrap around his flak jacket and lift him up, towards the open sky and the drifting clouds above. Kakashi feels as if he is flying, close enough to touch the birds themselves.

And the Hatake Sakumo has his son in such a tight embrace that Kakashi doesn't even have the space to sob.

"Otou-san," he mumbles into his father's collar. "Otou-san. Daddy."

"Kakashi." His father sounds as close to tears as he is. "Kashi."

Kakashi knows very well that he wouldn't be reacting in such a way if it were not for his tiny body, but for once, he lets Kakashi the shinobi go. He throws away his true age and his post-traumatic-stressed mind and snuggles into his father's jacket just like he used to as a toddler. He understands now. Just by the way his father holds him now, he understands why his father left.

Sniffles, drawing further away, reveals Rin crying through a smile as she runs off to give them some privacy.

Kakashi feels Sakumo sit down heavily onto the clean grass. "When I came back, I didn't expect you to look like this," Sakumo chuckles thickly. "Where's your mask?"

"I didn't either," Kakashi replies, rubbing his eyes. "I'm not crying!" he shouts stubbornly as his father's face crinkles into a smile. "It's this body I'm not used to! And apparently I don't need a mask here!" He hates the childish quality of his voice.

A pause.

Sakumo's hand presses down on his son's silvery hair, ruffling the soft strands. "Kakashi…" he begins.

"Don't," Kakashi cuts in.

"But I–"

"You don't need to apologise, Otou-san," Kakashi says firmly, pouting. "You really don't."

"I'm sorry," Sakumo breathes, as if the words tumble out of him after decades of imprisonment. "There are too many things I should apologise for."

"I'm proud to be your son!" Kakashi yells indignantly, full volume, as only a child can. "You only did what you did to restore the clan's honour!" he shouts. Sakumo grunts as Kakashi hurls himself into his waist.

Kakashi feels a drop of liquid hit the top of his head, followed by a few more. And then more. Slowly, he looks up, and then crawls up Sakumo's flak jacket. Kakashi reaches out a tiny gloved hand and wipes away the tears that cascade out of Sakumo's eyes. "Don't cry, daddy," Kakashi grins.

Sakumo presses his cheek into his son's downy hair. "You're a great kid, you know, Kakashi? The best son anyone could ask for."

Kakashi grows still. "No… I'm not," he confesses. "I tried to follow the rules, Otou-san. But I ended up leaving some friends of mine… and when I realised my mistake, I didn't manage to save all of them."

Sakumo scrubs at his eyes and smiles at his son. "Tell me your story, Kakashi. I don't mind. I want to know."

"Okay, but it'll take a while, so…"

"It doesn't matter," Sakumo chuckles, rubbing his son's cheek. "I'll always be proud of you."

"Alright, then, Otou-san…"

Sakumo holds his son closer as the story unfolds. He remembers a time when he read bedtime stories to Kakashi, and smiles, for it is time for Kakashi to tell his father some of his own.

(:~:)

**Fluffy. Anyway, I thought that making a chakra seal for Sakumo made more sense than the entire 'Father-and-son-meet-up-in-death-limbo' thing. I realised halfway through writing this chapter that Kishimoto's a lot like Pain in a way. He uses pain to help characters grow. List of characters who become great shinobi because of death: Shikamaru (Asuma, Shikaku), Naruto (Minato, Kushina, Jiraiya), Gaara (mother, he killed loads of people), Kakashi (Sakumo, sensei, best friend, last teammate), Sasuke (sort of, with Itachi…), Ino (Inoichi).**

**You see my point. That's all BESIDES extra pain like PTSD and the effects of war…Kishimoto's probably a secret Pain, too. XD See you all next week. Review please? Love you all.**


	9. The Silver-Haired Toddler with Swagger

**DUN DUN DUN! Next chapter. Thank you for all the views and favourites. I love you guys. We get into the actual action here, so potential for awesome! I finally managed to get back into the writing groove in the past few days, so I hope this chapter is up to your expectations.**

**azfaerydust****: As always, your reviews are wonderful. I'll apologise in advance because this chapter doesn't have Sakumo in it, but I promise I'll put him in for the next one. There was just too much action to get through XD**

**TheParadoxicalOtaku:**** Yes, I do believe we're psychic. And I'm flattered, because I really have absolutely no idea what to write that people will like. So getting such a nice review makes me glow. Thank you very much.**

**harvestangel99:**** Thank you so much! I think the reason there aren't too many Kashi-chibi fics out there is that people don't have a father figure for him, but Jiraiya, I think, is perfect. Hope you like the chapter!**

**VampireDoll666:**** I totally agree. AND HE'S GETTING CUTER. XD**

**Prescripto13:**** Thank you! I draw inspiration from many canon events for my writing, but I disagree sometimes with canon portrayals. Kakashi's power changes wildly according to the situation – I've never understood why that happens. I've decided to make Kashi-chan do the best he can with the resources he has. Hope I don't disappoint with this chapter! (Eeep!)**

**Rosbunse:**** My apologies. I think fluff isn't fluff unless is mixed with some emotion, anyway. Happy fluff, worried fluff. This was sad fluff. I hope it didn't tug at your heartstrings too much.**

**Osprey Eamon:**** Evil overlords should really stop monologuing like that, don't you think? Pain has problems, sure, but Obito's plain mad. Or maybe they're both mad and influenced each other. XD Thanks for reviewing!**

**Thriaemis:**** Thank you so much for reviewing! This one's more action-based, though, but I hope you like it anyway.**

**Priest of Pain:**** Well, I think all authors have god complexes in a way. Kishimoto just likes making readers suffer sometimes. Cockroachspit… I didn't think of it like that, but I suppose you're right. Kashi does more of that this chapter. Thanks for thinking I'm not evil, by the way. My friends all think I am XD**

(:~:)

Jiraiya is terrified.

In over forty years as a shinobi, he has never felt such mind-numbing, gut-clenching _fear_ before. It is not the exhilaration of battle or the swaggering mask he puts on in front of his enemies, but a staring, gaping horror that threatens to break that fragile façade. Blind terror mocks his hammering heart and holds his unwavering gaze, preventing him from tearing away his stare of disbelieving shock even though he wants to.

Thirty feet away, Pain raises his long, chakra-infused rod, examining the eighteen-month-old child impaled on it with a dispassionate expression.

Jiraiya's trained, analytical brain notes how only crimson coats silver hair in such an exquisitely contrasting way, unnatural and horrifying… the grandfather and sensei in him is screaming Kakashi's name.

But then Pain's violet eyes narrow, Jiraiya draws in a shuddering breath as a small 'poof' sounds, heralding a substitution jutsu. Kakashi, unharmed and bouncy as ever, announces his presence by tugging on Jiraiya's pant leg.

Jiraiya reaches down numbly to pat Kakashi's head, saying hoarsely, "Kashi… don't do that to me again. Please."

Pain glances at the clump of mud that Kakashi the clone had exchanged himself for, and throws the rod and dirt away. The metal clangs harshly as it smashes into the concrete, breaking into sharpened edges. "Kawarimi," he comments. "I should have known."

Kakashi's mismatched gaze clouds in confusion as he looks up at Jiraiya, the scarlet of his sharingan and sable of his right eye blinking in unison. "You 'kay, Jiwaiya-jiji?" he asks. "Imma kage bunshin! I won' die."

Jiraiya swallows past the lump of relief in his throat. _I don't want a child to have a memory of his own agonising death._ "I know, Kashi," he replies, his voice carefully controlled, "but I don't want you getting hurt." From somewhere in the mess of pipes behind them, Pakkun growls his agreement.

Both of Kakashi's eyes curve in an eye-smile. "Okie," he nods seriously. "Sowwy."

The sennin's hands circle the child's chest and Kakashi gurgles happily he is placed on Jiraiya's broad shoulders. "All right!" Jiraiya hollers as soon as Kakashi is secure. "I'm not going to be lectured like a kid _by_ a kid, so from now, I'm taking this seriously." He slams a hand into the ground, bloodied finger marking the concrete red. "Kuchiyose no jutsu!" As Gamabunta's giant form swells into place beneath Jiraiya's feet, Kakashi squeals in exhilaration, bobbing along the change in height as he clings to Jiraiya's ears.

"You see these tears of blood, overflowing with rage?!" Jiraiya shouts exultantly. "I went from Sannin to Sennin! I'm the Most Holy Jiraiya-sama of Mount Myo – OOOF!" Gamabunta rocks underneath him, and Jiraiya's resulting faceplant into toad skin is made all the worse by the Kakashi's shriek of joy as he tears out the sennin's hair in an effort to keep himself on Jiraiya's shoulders. But a moment later, Jiraiya is up again, undeterred and brazen as ever. "GAMABUNTA, HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO BOB?! – Anyway," he continues, turning back to Pain, "I'm going to kick butt, and I AM JIRAIYA-SAMA!" An unbreakable grin explodes across his features.

"And Imma Kashi!" Kakashi bellows, as deeply as his squeaky voice can manage. He yanks sharply on Jiraiya's white fringe, howling with anarchy. "I kick butt too!" To emphasise his point, he throws both small sandaled feet in the air and slams his heels down on Jiraiya's chest, laughing maniacally as he shakes his tiny fists at Pain. Pure white hair pokes out from between his fingers.

Jiraiya chokes on his next words, feeling as if he is being scalped and pummelled at the same time. "Good job, Kashi," he croaks. "Swaggering well."

Hanging high above, Pain looks on from his own twisted chameleon summon, which – impossibly – bulges its eyes out even more. Pain says impassively, "Neither of you are advanced. You're just as clumsy as before, sensei."

Supremely unaffected, Jiraiya promptly bites his own wrists and draws lines of iron-scented crimson from his eyes to his tattoos. "I'm using the honoured sage mode. Kashi, hold on and don't fall off."

Short, grime-covered arms tighten around his neck. "Okie."

Pain steps into the open jaws of the chameleon summon. HIs gaze grazes his old sensei's once, like the barest touch of wind before the onslaught of a gale, and then he _vanishes_. Jiraiya hisses as his gut wrenches and his nerves begin to tingle. It is that innate sense of foreboding an animal has of an oncoming storm, or in a shinobi's case, the rushing arrival of death personified. Jiraiya opens his mouth to direct Gamabunta–

–and Kakashi points a stubby finger towards their left as his Sharingan focuses, shouting, "Jiwaya-jiji! Dere!"

Jiraiya barely manages to snap up a barrier around himself and Kakashi as an eyeblink later, a three-headed dog summon explodes out of nothingness. A triplet of open maws stretch wide in yawning hunger. Jiraiya feels Kakashi involuntarily shrink into the back of his neck as the sennin braces himself against the onslaught of steaming breath from the giant, sharp-fanged jaws. In the second it takes for the hound-summon to cross the vertical distance between them in one powerful leap, Jiraiya observes, with frightening accuracy, the gleam of snarling fury in six eyes and the innumerable razors of teeth bearing down on them, even as Gamabunta flexes beneath his sandals, preparing to leap–

The world dissolves into a terrible screeching of tearing masonry and bursting pipes as Gamabunta hurls himself through the mass of rusted channels and out into open air. Jiraiya feels a fleeting breeze on his face, dust and rubble cascading about him in a deadly hail, and then Gamabunta wraps a webbed hand around a pipe and they all skid into an ungraceful halt, their passage marked by a waterfall of debris that rains past them to echo in the dark streets below.

"You okay, Kashi?" Jiraiya asks, slightly short of breath.

"Mmm-hmm," Kashi murmurs. Jiraiya hears a deep sniff and senses the tremble in the child's limbs. "Pakkun poofed," Kakashi says sadly, burying his face in the sennin's hair.

"He had to, to escape," Jiraiya answers. "You should go too, return to the original."

"NO!" Jiraiya winces as Kashi screams into his ear. "Jiwaiya-jiji all alone!"

Jiraiya mentally sweatdrops as to how a tiny child could possibly aid him, but he is glad for the small, warm comfort on his back.

Especially when the top of the building erupts in a shock of shattering concrete and a _ten_-headed dog-summon tears its way into clean air.

Gamabunta's pronged weapon looks hopelessly fragile compared to tonnes of solid muscle and white enamel, and sure enough, Jiraiya grunts as the toad is shoved back with the force of a hundred battering rams. And then Kakashi's loud, yet calm call of "Up!" warns Gamabunta just enough so that he swivels his shield to meet the spearpointed beak of yet _another_ summon that dives out of the sky.

The shuddering impact sends a shiver through Jiraiya vision, as if a giant child has taken the world and shaken it to his heart's content. In the disoriented crash of toad to ground and deafening reverberation of shield to concrete, Jiraiya loses any thought but to protect Kakashi–

He isn't there.

The warm mass on his neck is gone. Horror threatens to overwhelm Jiraiya as he spins, searching for a glint of silver among the rubble. The force of the blow from the summon must have separated them in mid-air, but Jiraiya seriously doubts that Kakashi had the ability to dodge so much debris in his small form. Images of a trapped toddler sobbing in agony fill his mind…

_No no no no… Sakumo… please forgive me…_

"Jiraiya?" Gamabunta groans from behind him. "Where's the brat?" There is an unspoken fear there as well, thinly veiled. This is not the Jiraiya he knows, sannin to sennin. This is an old war veteran with hands that tremble with barely concealed emotion, past horrors flitting across his face like mask after fragile mask.

Jiraiya swallows and forces himself to think logically. Kakashi is a kage bunshin, so he would probably poof after a certain pain limit. And no. It would not do to fall in battle against a _summon_ of all things, and terrified to boot. Not fear _of_ the enemy, but _for_ a child as dear to him as a son. "Gamabunta," he begins, his voice tempered steel, "this is strange. Why would Nagato only fight me using summons when he knows so much more?"

"I don't know." Gamabunta is visibly relieved that Jiraiya is in control of himself. "I'm too ungraceful to realise."

"Gamabunta," Jiraiya says suddenly, "Go home. I can take it from here."

"Good luck." The toad vanishes in a puff of white smoke, and air rushes in around Jiraiya to fill in the empty space where Gamabunta was.

Jiraiya turns slightly to face the last summon head-on. An ugly bull-like thing. There is nothing inside him now, nothing except rage and a deadly sort of calm. He has only felt so twice in his life: once when news of Sakumo's death reached him, and twice in the third shinobi war, when Dan's death had hit Tsunade hard and Jiriaya had been forced to fight in her place. The bull-summon should stamp on him like an ant, but he feels like a giant instead.

"Nagato, you coward," Jiraiya calls hoarsely, "show yourself."

Hidden within the invisible chameleon-summon, Pain only blinks in recognition as the horns of the bull drive Jiraiya straight into a wall of pipes, the sannin disappearing into the cave-like tunnel carved by his own body.

And then the crackling of Raiton chakra reaches Pain's ears and he pivots to find a small hand breaking through his summon's cheek, spraying blood into his eyes. The summon poofs out of existence, an impossible, _tiny_ form flying out of the resulting smoke

"Raikiri!" Kakashi shouts as loud as his little lungs can, sharingan spinning scarlet and sable as he stabs a lightning and gore-covered hand directly toward Pain's heart. Pain lazily leans to the left, encloses Kakashi's fragile wrist in a single hand, and hurls the toddler across the square and into the hole Jiraiya had made.

Kakashi collides with something very soft, very warm, and extremely cushion-like.

A pained grunt sounds from somewhere above his head, and Kakashi's sharingan pinwheels to focus on _three_ different chakra signatures. Jiraiya's face is covered by a mask of shadow, but his voice is thick when it comes. "Kakashi?"

"Jiwaiya-jiji?"

"You're…you're not hurt or anything?"

Kakashi shakes his head in the darkness, snuggling into Jiraiya's stomach. "Nope."

Jiraiya's hiss, of some emotion Kakashi doesn't understand, fills the small space. A moment later, some unseen force rushes by Kakashi and flings the bull-summon, which had been sniffing about the entrance, into oblivion. Kakashi squeals in delight.

A gravelly female voice sounds from Jiraiya's shoulder. "Jiraiya-chan! Why'd ya always summon us t'such filthy places? And who's the brat? Serme illegitimate child of yers?"

Kakashi doesn't understand this, or why Jiraiya splutters indignantly above him.

_Another_ voice, this one unflinchingly male and very ancient, replies from the right. "Now, Ma, leave 'im be. Ah'm sure 'e's got 'is reasons."

"Shut yer trap, Pa! Yer mind's gettin' too old."

At this point, Kakashi breaks in adorably. "O'aiyo, Gama-jii-san, Gama-baa-san."

A pause.

"Ferget what ah said, Jiraiya-chan," Ma chuckles. "He can't be yer kid. Too polite." Pa joins in the laughter.

"I do apologise for the circumstances, Boss, Ma'am," Jiraiya says in a carefully controlled voice. "This is Kakashi. Don't ask why he's so small. Kakashi, this is Fukusaku-sama and Shima-sama."

"Nice ter meet yer, gaki."

Jiraiya's chuckle has an edge to it. "Let's finish the introductions later. My opponent possesses the Rinnegan."

"Oooh, the pupils o' six paths!" Ma's excitement is palpable.

"They really exist!" Fukusaku exclaims.

"Yes," Jiraiya says shortly. "Please lend me your aid for a short while. Shall we begin?"

The answer comes, but not in the way the three expected. Kakashi crawls back up to his place on the back of Jiraiya's neck, barely squeezing in between the two toads. "Yes!" he proclaims.

"Dear me," Ma comments. "He's more excited then you are, Jiraiya-chan."

Kakashi shuffles about a bit until he parts Jiraiya's mane of long spiky hair. Satisfied that his eyes are not about to get poked out, he leans forward. "Go!" he shouts, point-blank into Jiraiya's ringing eardrums.

Fukusaku chuckles. "I have to agree, gaki."

(:~:)

Sasuke feels the wind snatch at his hair and throw it behind him as the miles fly past beneath. The oncoming gale wraps him in a cocoon of silence, but it is not this but rather the absence of human voices that makes his surroundings so quiet. For a strange moment, as the forest continues to open up in front of him and he sees not a soul but for the three chakra signatures behind him, he expects that dobe Naruto to shout some insult at his speed and Kakashi's quiet reprimand that _Sasuke _is not the team leader, _he_ is. And Sakura… Sakura would shout something obscene at Naruto for insulting _her_ Sasuke-kun.

But there are no jesting words from his old team now. Only a toothy idiot with a huge blade, a bi-polar giant, and a fangirl who could rival Sakura.

"Sasuke!" Karin's voice is nearly broken by the wind, but it reaches him nonetheless. "I sense four chakra signatures some way behind us. Three have normal chakra reservoirs, but the other's is huge. And it seems…demonic somehow."

Sasuke ignores Karin's comment. He knows all too well who is following him, simply by description alone. _Dobe._ But now is no time to question his aims. For the last eight years of his life, there has only been vengeance. He would not allow something so trivial as rivalry come between him and his final goal.

"All of you," Sasuke orders, "Fall back. Deal with our trackers. I'll go on alone."

Suigetsu whines a complaint even as Karin's annoying voice cuts in, but Sasuke throws a red glare over his shoulder, and the three shinobi drop back like pebbles down a well.

Sasuke revels in the silence around him once more. He is ready. He has never been more ready to face his brother than now. Without looking back, he speeds on ahead.

(:~:)

"Shikamaru, I think we have a problem."

Shikamaru looks up from his feet to find Naruto craning his head back. "What is it?"

Naruto looks wary. "Two of my clones just poofed up ahead. One got taken out by the three shinobi who were with Sasuke. I think they separated and came back to stop us. The other kage bunshin ran into two Akatsuki members."

"Describe them." Shikamaru's sharp tone has even Sakura looking questioningly back at him, but he continues without comment. "Describe them!" he snaps, almost an order.

Naruto doesn't mention that Shikamaru shouldn't be giving orders in the first place. His eyes narrow in a worried manner as he answers. "The first one had silver hair and a three-bladed scythe. The other one was creepy as hell! Black and green eyes, black mask…it didn't look human." Understanding dawns on his features even as Shikamaru's become set in determination. "They're the two who hurt Asuma-sensei, right?" Naruto asks.

Shikamaru nods. He doesn't trust himself to speak.

Naruto's next words halt Shikamaru in his tracks. "Stop!" the blonde yells. Four pairs of sandals slam into branches.

"Naruto…" Shikamaru begins bracingly, "Our mission doesn't include–"

"Yes it does," Naruto cuts in, his eyes brighter than usual. "Kashi-sensei was carried off by those two. My clone didn't see him with them, but their trail probably leads back to the Akatsuki base anyway. The way we're going now means that we'll run into those three shinobi and then Itachi and Sasuke's fight first. If you went the other way, past those two Akatsuki, then you might reach the base faster, and find Kashi-sensei."

Judging by the stunned silence of the other two, Shikamaru isn't the only one in shock. And _Kashi-_sensei?

Slowly, Shikamaru's mouth opens, and he finds himself chuckling. "Naruto," he laughs, "I take whatever preconceptions I had back. Your plan is actually quite…logical." _And skewed in my favour._ He pauses and straightens. "Thank you. You're a good captain."

Hinata quickly jumps in to agree, though by her stammering, she is now not only in love with Naruto, but awed by him as well.

"No problem, Shika," Naruto answers brightly. "Sakura-chan," he says, turning to her, "I want you to go with Shikamaru."

Sakura's tirade explodes at him before he can even brace himself. "Sakura-chan," Naruto winces, "Shikamaru is a mid-range type. He'll need a short-range type to help him. Kakashi-sensei told us that teamwork is the most important thing. Shikamaru can't stop those shinobi unless there's someone to back him up."

Sakura's eyes have turned into a horrible mix of betrayal and anger. "Naruto! You and I both know that's not the reason you're sending me away! Send Hinata instead! You know I want to face Sasuke!" Her fist draws back, preparing to pummel him.

Surprisingly, it is not Naruto, but Shikamaru who steps in. "Stop, Sakura!" he orders. He fixes her in a narrowed gaze. "Yes. That isn't his reason for sending you away. He's sending you away because you're so emotionally compromised that you can't think straight when it comes to Sasuke." At her furious protest, Shikamaru says in exasperation, "Shut it, woman, and stop being so troublesome. You're a chuunin kunoichi. Act like one! What were you going to do when we reached Sasuke? Leap out of formation and kill him yourself? Take the burden off Naruto?"

At this, Sakura falls abruptly silent, tears threatening to fall down her cheeks. Shikamaru's words ring too close to the truth. Naruto looks away.

"Come with me," Shikamaru commands. And it _is_ a command; the same tone of quiet authority is present in his voice, just as it is present in his father's.

"Go on, Sakura-chan," Naruto says gently. Sakura whips to face him. "Go. It's an order," Naruto murmurs, sounding not at all like himself. Older. Stronger.

With a nod in Naruto's direction, Shikamaru pivots and springs to the right, the foliage concealing him and his green flak jacket in moments. Sakura slowly stands, hands clenched into fists by her sides. For a moment, Naruto is blinded by an image of her in front of the gates to Konoha, hands held in the exact same position as she begs him to bring Sasuke back.

And then a whisper of boots on bark later, the falsh of pink disappears after Shikamaru.

Naruto stares into space for the longest while, until a quiet voice next to him turns his head. "Naru...Naruto-kun..." Hinata stammers, staring at his sandals, "You should…shouldn't worry."

Naruto blinks at her for a moment, and then his smile returns and it is as if the sun broke through a web of storm clouds. "Thanks, Hinata," Naruto says, clapping a hand on her shoulder. She squeaks in embarassment, but he has already leapt on, toward his uncertain future. Hinata shakes her head clear and follows him.

Her Naruto-kun is going forward. She'd better make sure she could catch up.

(:~:)

Kashi loves his new toad-nakama. He'd been a little worried before because his Jiraiya-jiji was getting beat up and the Pakkun and the nice huge toad had poofed and he'd been hurled onto a pipe that he almost fell off and the scary-dead-purple-eyed-man had stopped his lightning and thrown him into a hole. But now, this is _fun._

Jiraiya hears Kakashi cheer as Fukusaku spits out a mouthful of sharpened wind and slices the pipes around Pain cleanly in half. He wishes he could share in the child's optimism, but Pain is being…well, a pain in his neck. Jiraiya tracks Pain's movements with his sage mode crimson-rimmed eyes, and frowns as the man comes to a sudden stop.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu!" Pain shouts as he slams a palm into the ground. To Jiraiya's confusion, two other bodies wink into existence, rods jammed painfully into their skin and looking as inhuman as their summoner. And then all three raise their gazes to stare at the sennin, and Jiraiya's blood runs cold.

Three pairs of Rinnegan observe him impassively.

Fukusaku voices his confusion. "Three? What in tarnation?"

"It's got to be something to do with his jutsu," Jiraiya mutters. He feels Kakashi shift behind him, a small mouth next to his ear. _Right, that one can be Baldie, the first one can be Ponytail, and the next one can be Long-hair._

"Purple eyes. Dead," Kakashi murmurs through his torn mask, the selfsame words he spoke Jiraiya just before the battle started.

_Dead…_

A theory presents itself to Jiraiya, but he stows it away until further evidence can be found. "Time to rumble," he says gleefully. "Let's start with some more swagger, shall we?" A sucks in a deep breath. "FROM THIS MOMENT ON, LET SAGE JUTSU PREVAIL! THE GALLANT JIRAI–"

Two webbed fists smack into his cheeks while a gloved one smashes into the top of his head. "Will yah quit yakkin' in mah ear?" Fukusaku and Shima screech in unison.

"Yes. Shout. Ite!" Kakashi agrees.

"Ah need ter hurrer on home ta cook supper!" Shima complains loudly.

"Pay attention! This guy's more important!" Fukusaku shouts back.

Jiraiya resists the temptation to cover his ears.

"SHADDUP!" Kakashi hollers over all. "Baddie come." He points at the three Pains.

Long-hair cannonballs toward them, its grotesque hands studded with metal. In an eyeblink, Jiraiya pivots on one foot, leaps forward, and whams a foot into its gut. Kakashi's hand is a feather touch on Jiraiya's hair as the toddler cartwheels over his head, sandal scything around in a vicious circle that smashes Long-hair directly between the eyes. The path skids across the floor like a pebble to water before reducing a boiler to scrap metal. Kakashi takes a moment to grin at the mess before scrambling behind Jiraiya's neck again.

"Not bad," the first Pain comments.

"Can we put spousal problems aside for now and finish this?" Jiraiya asks tiredly.

"Sure. Ah'm gonna cook up some fried Pain," Shima answers.

Jiraiya leans back, cheeks bulging with oil. Shima gasps in a breath, as does Fukusaku. Then a torrent of toad oil explodes from Jiraiya's lips with the force of a water cannon, followed instantly by directing wind from Fukusaku and mouthfuls of flame from Shima. It barely takes a moment for the entire piped pit to fill with boiling oil. Kakashi's eyes widen at the fire; figures wreathed in shadow and luminance dance in the flames. "Hanabi…" he breathes happily. _Fireworks._

But his joy is short-lived as Baldie bounds forward and thrusts two thick hands into the sea of fire, absorbing the jutsu in a frighteningly short space of time. Undeterred, Jiraiya summons a massive rasengan and kicks off his sandals, hands and feet growing toad-like as he bears the massive sphere of whirling chakra directly down of Baldie's head.

The next sensation is very disturbing.

Jiraiya's chakra bleeds away into the Pain's hands, as if the rasengan is a balloon stretched tight that pops suddenly, all the air and chakra within rushing away in mere seconds. _He's absorbing my chakra?_

Shima's panicked voice lances into his ear. "Look out behind you, Jiraiya-chan!"

Several things happen at once.

Kakashi turns his head to see the clawed hand of Long-hair terrifyingly close to him. Fukusaku palms a smoke bomb and the world turns to grey mist. Kakashi's sharingan widens as it looks through the veil, sees disgusting, thick fingers wrap around the collar of his flak jacket.

And then Jiraiya's hair is no longer underneath Kakashi's' fingers and he is hurled head-first through the mist and into the first Pain's waiting grasp.

By the time Jiraiya turns back to the battle, Kakashi is already bound with a chakra leash, the strings tied to a chakra-rod stake in the ground. But as Jiraiya forces down guilt at not evading fast enough, he contemplates how Long-hair could have blocked his attack without even _seeing_ him.

Jiraiya stares at Kakashi's shaky eye-smile and hates himself for what he must do. "I'm sorry, Kashi," he whispers.

"We need to skedaddle, boy," Fukusaku hisses in his ear.

Jiraiya nods. "I know. We need to work out the abilities of his Rinnegan." With one last, pained gaze thrown over his shoulder at his tiny nakama, Jiraiya blasts a hole into the ground and darts into the labyrinth of pipes.

Kakashi shivers in the sudden chill and wishes for the warmth of Pakkun.

(:~:)

**I know, I know, I'm horrible, leaving you there. But I couldn't fit all that I wanted into one chapter, so I have to cut it off here. Next chapter has loads of action and awesome Kashi moments, physical and emotional, though! Review please? I love you all.**


	10. Growing Up and Growing Down

**Just before I posted this, I read Naruto chapter 635. The latest one. And my feelings are as thus…**

**KISHIMOTO IF YOU DARE TO CONTINUE WHAT YOU JUST DID ON THAT LAST PAGE I WILL PERSONALLY KILL YOU FOR DOING THAT TO MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER.**

**Kakashi is holy. Lay off him, Kishi.**

**I'm sorry about that little rant there, and also for the late update. I had too many things to do around the weekend for me to post then. I'll reply to reviews at the bottom of the chapter (BUT READ THE CHAPTER FIRST! I REFERENCE IT). Thanks to all those who favourited and followed. Hope this one fulfils your expectations.**

(:~:)

_Kashi wanna go home._

So thought Kakashi during the long minutes he waited for Jiraiya to return. He had shown exceptional fortitude as a kage bunshin, fortitude increased by a child's natural stubbornness, and it is this unwillingness to admit defeat that now stops him from dispersing and returning to the original.

But that in itself is impossible – being the three Pains' only bargaining card, his near-depleted pool of chakra had been overwhelmed by a torrent of sticky, _filthy_ chakra from Pain, wiring him to continue to exist. He cannot poof even if he wants to.

It is a shivering, soaked Kashi with his headband forcibly pushed down over his sharingan that continues to wait, stuffed between the three Pains who stand back-to-back. The floor is a freezing, clammy wetness under his fingers, mud and grime turning his hair into stiff spikes that shine dully in a poor echo of their former silver glory. Lips tremble behind torn mask; scratched cheeks sting with salty tears; and numb hands barely feel the air shift about him and the wall of Pains boxing him in.

The breath of wind on his mask shivers once.

A gale erupts around him in a circle of incandescent light, liquefying the stone beneath his fingers and turning it to quicksand. A hand wraps around his ankle in a vice, and with barely time to squeak, Kakashi is pulled into the earth below.

Silence, save for the inexpressible sense of rushing movement, dirt that forces itself into his eyes and mouth and ears and chokes him in suppressing darkness, a million wet fists pressing in on him with incredible pressure, cold slime and airless space, the hand on his ankle turning into a claw, crimson-tinged shadow of a child's shout of terror–

Jiraiya grins down at Kakashi, his smile a crack of light in mud and slime. "Gotcha, brat," he laughs.

Kakashi wipes dirt from his eye and pouts. "You late," he says accusingly.

Jiraiya's face collapses into mock guilt. "Of _course_ I am! I'm so very sorry, Kashi, because obviously I should just have jumped straight in to a triangle of zombies with shared vision and unknown repertoires of jutsu, hurling chakra around like a senile old man, instead of _looking for the single blind spot!_" He shoots the child a glare.

Kakashi stares back up at him, mouth slightly open under his mask. Jiraiya had lost him at 'repertoires'. "I dun geddit," he shakes his head. "Sowwy."

Surprisingly, Jiraiya flashes a reckless, cocky grin at him. "Don't worry. I do." A hand worms its way into Kakashi's filthy hair. "Arigato, gaki," Jiraiya murmurs, suddenly serious. "Your advice helped me." _Purple eyes. Dead._ Kakashi had whispered those words twice in the battle, but it wasn't until Jiriaya nearly had his head taken off by an attacker that didn't even look at him that he realised the hidden meaning in Kakashi's previous message.

Purple eyes... _Shared vision._

Dead… _The real one is not among them._

"Yah every bit the Jounin, ent ya?" Fukusaku remarks from Jiraiya's shoulder. "Why haven't ya poofed yet?"

"Dunno…" Kakashi shrugs his small shoulders, squirming under the sharp gaze of the toad. "Kashi helping me," he finally says.

"Kakashi? The real one?"

The clone nods happily, eye curving into a smile. "Lotsa chakra! Strong!" he declares.

Jiraiya stares at him for a moment longer, slightly unsettled. Kakashi had been a bouncy, optimistic bundle of joy ever since being de-aged, but it is in moments like these where Jiriaya wonders whether the eye-smile is an indication of a real grin beneath that half-torn mask, or if the childish euphoria is simply yet _another_ façade. What horrible memories could surface when a kage bunshin battered to this extent returned to the original?

And then Fukusaku socks him one and Jiraiya jolts out of it.

"Right… genjutsu," he mumbles.

"Ah don't wanna do this," Shima moans. "Ah can't sing no duet with Pa at this age! It's Embarassin'!"

"We've been over this, ma'am," Jiriaya sighs. "I can say this with a straight face for once – this is for world peace." Shima shifts, but says no more.

Kakashi blinks as Jiraiya squats down in front of him, and blinks again at the gentle touch of callused fingers to the scratches on his neck. "Kashi-chan," Jiraiya says, a touch of steel in his voice. "Be a good boy and disperse now."

Matted silver hair shivers as Kakashi shakes his head. "Can't."

"Kakashi, I know you said you wanted to hel–"

"Not won't. Can't."

Jiriaya pauses. "Can't?"

"Can't poof. See?" Kakashi crosses his fingers into the seal and focuses, cheeks wobbling with the effort. A moment later, he straightens and scratches his head. "Pain's chakra," he confesses.

"We're wasting time," Fukusaku says. "Pain's chakra would–" He cuts off his words with sudden intake of breath as he realises something.

"Damn! With the chakra, they can track us!" Jiraiya curses as he reaches next to the wall for Kakashi.

The wall explodes.

In the fiery hail of stone and chakra-laced iron, Kakashi waltzes around the debris with unerring grace, takes two steps, and throws himself into water. In a moment of exquisite simplicity, Jiraiya notes with the bland, observing eye of a shinobi that a pair of Rinnegan is fixed on Kakashi's disappearing feet, another glares at him, and the third pair is…

Blind.

One pair of Rinnegan on him only means that finally, the playing field is even.

Jiraiya summons a massive rusted sword out of a hidden scroll and heaves the entire thing at Ponytail like a boomerang. A small gasp escapes the Pain's lips as the heavy blade skewers not only him, but the other two as well, pinning them to the wall.

Jiraiya doesn't hesitate, sticking in two more blades and angling them to reduce the three bodies' hearts to smithereens.

He gives all their heads a vicious kick for good measure.

Of the three now still 'Pains', Ponytail's Rinnegan dulls as it stares unseeingly up at Jiraiya, Long-hair's broken eyes crumble, and Baldie's face is smushed into the wall.

"Boss, Ma'am," Jiraiya pants, slightly out of breath, "I've made you Pain kebab for dinner."

"Ah'm not that hungry," Fukusaku comments, wincing as Long-hair's eyeball rolls out of its socket.

"I'll make yer serme real food when we get back," Shima coughs.

"Hey, hey!" Jiraiya protests. "Cheer up some! I kicked butt here!" He waves at the clone, who has swum his way to the far side of the sewer. "And look! Kashi's fine too!" His grin is unmatched now – a wide, toothy, half-moon of victory. "I _babysat_ while neutralising three superpowered, zombie enemy nin!" he crows.

Jiraiya swaggers in his victory for another second until realisation hits him in the gut. It was a rookie mistake – why would those already dead 'die' in such a manner if only pierced through the heart? They should be unable to attack, but _twitching_, not still.

A breath escapes him. "Boss–"

A voice as chilling as the killing intent that washes over him whispers into Jiraiya's ear, _"You always taught me to watch my back, sensei."_

Terrible pain in his left shoulder.

Tears in his eyes as wind rushes past him.

An agonised cry that might be his own.

Jiraiya scarcely manages to right himself at the zenith of his arc, and skids across the top of the water. Friction burns his skin as water does to a pebble skipping across its surface, but it is nothing compared to the vomit-inducing, muscle-clenching _torture_ in the empty space where his left arm used to be.

"Lad, yer arm!" Fukusaku and Shima shout in unison.

"I know," Jiraiya forces past gritted teeth. Dazedly, he hears the pitter-patter of tiny feet as Kakashi sprints across the water and slides to a wide-eyed halt by his jiji's side.

"Jiwaiya-jiji…" Kakashi says quietly.

"Doesn't matter, kid, it's only an arm. That's why we're born with two," Jiraiya answers in a failed impression of his usual jauntiness. He fights for control through a haze of red in his vision.

The muffled _clang_ of metal against concrete echoes out of the maw of a hole in the pipes. Six shapes blur out of the cavernous mouth and halt within an eyeblink, as if they had not bothered with decelerating but rather snapped from lightning speed to a complete stop in an instant.

Pain's voice, when it speaks, doesn't need to raise. There is only a gentle wind that flaps against six cloaks of scarlet clouds on sable, and a simple sentence that is neither a challenge nor a question.

"In attendance, the Six Paths of Pain."

There is really no complicated way to describe Kakashi's thoughts as water drips off his masked chin. _In attendance_ – from a long-buried memory, Kakashi recalls the use of the phase by a sensei in his short stint at the academy. "In at-ten-dance," he murmurs to himself. "They're all here," he mutters dreamily.

"Kashi?" Jiraiya growls painfully.

When Kakashi speaks, the snap of an order in his words freezes Jiraiya in place. "Gimme your chakra, jiji," Kakashi states plainly, ignoring the squeak in his voice as he stands tall, staring unwaveringly into the violet eyes before him.

"What?" Jiraiya can't keep his confusion from showing. True, he had been relying heavily on Sage jutsu during the battle and so his normal chakra pool, though not anywhere near full, is not lacking either, but why would the clone…

"Jiraiya-jiji!" Kakashi hands are balled into fists now, and Jiraiya's ears note the lack of a lisp just as his eyes notice the gleam of determination in the child's sharingan.

Without knowing why or what he is doing, Jiraiya crouches and places his hand on Kakashi's shoulder, pumping chakra into the little body as quickly as he dares.

Pure, crystalline energy rushes into Kakashi, turning his veins into torrents of ice and his heart into a drum of maddened beats as it washes away any trace of Pain in him. He feels so small, so inescapably _fragile_ that he wonders for a moment whether the shining influx of light will tear him asunder. But it is this glorious clarity that shines ageless from his childlike eyes as he levels his gaze at the six paths. Slowly and deliberately, he closes his right eye, leaving the endless pinwheel of his mangekyou sharingan spinning in his left.

With an odd, choked voice halfway between that of a boy and a man, Kakashi whispers, _"Kamui."_

(:~:)

Obito feels the spray of the waterfall dance about him like diamonds in the wind, dampening his sleeves and cooling his skin. Not on his face. He hears the water drip off his mask, liquid curving in a whirlpool of orange around his sharingan, but he does not _feel_ it. Some small part of him longs for the cold of pure droplets on his cheeks, but he shuts the desire off with a slow blink. He cannot afford to be human.

The torrent of raging cerulean rushes to the brink of the gorge and plummets hundreds of feet down into the azure pool below, sapphire shadows at its centre. The spray from the top of the cliff cools the air around Obito, but down below, where it polishes the valley pebbles into a glassy shine, mist washes over the feet of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara.

Obito stands, a miniscule speck of a shinobi, on the head of the greatest Uchiha that had ever lived, and gazes out to the Valley of the End. His ancestor fought his last battle here. And here, Naruto and the 'last of the Uchiha' had fought their final battle as friends. The roar of the waterfall consumes all.

Only in such a place can one feel so powerful and yet so insignificant.

A whirl of red clouds on black fabric later, Obito dances through the trees, heading back towards the border of Konoha. An unsettling premonition had entered his mind as he rested over the valley, much like the storm clouds gathering above. In an effort to quicken his return to the base, he does not bother with skirting over a large hill, instead deciding to phase through it. He feels as if a freezing curtain of rain passes over him as he ceases to be tangible in the real world, and enters into the emptiness of his own dimension–

No. Not emptiness.

Six bodies collide with him in rapid succession, broken bone, flesh and bits of chakra-coated metal slamming into his face. Obito hears rather than feels the _crack_ of his mask splitting open at the impact. A hand finds the floor amid chaos, and a smooth flip later, Obito crouches upon one of the many irregular boxes in the dimension, disoriented but royally pissed.

A quick glance at the carnage behind him reveals the six paths of Pain, smashed into an unrecognisable mess. Obito does not spare time to dwell on this surprising development, but faces forward again, just in time to catch the final wrinkle in the dimensional fabric to return to normal, and a final traveller to arrive.

A tiny child with a shock of silver hair, dressed in a filthy parody of what might once have been a jounin uniform, stumbles onto his hands and knees, gasping bucketfuls of air.

Obito gasps in a breath so quickly, he feels a burning in his lungs. The child – it could not be–

Kakashi wobbles on his feet as he slowly stands. He had not expected to mistime Kamui and suck himself in as well. He knows that as a clone, he would disperse in a matter of moments, but it is with contentment that he welcomes it. Jiriaya-jiji is safe.

Kakashi raises his head proudly and comes face to face with Obito.

Obito reaches up to his own features and realises his mask is gone. Sharingan meets sharingan in a single stare of awful understanding and utter, bitter knowledge on both sides.

Kakashi opens his mouth and screams.

Kakashi continues screaming, even as his final chakra reserves run dry and he disperses in a cloud of smoke.

Obito leaps forward to grasp a shadow of his former teammate, no more than a hint of chakra in smoke. A moment later, his momentum carries him out on the other side of the hill, into a thunderstorm.

Lightning smashes trees to smithereens and rain drives down in a freezing hail of icy droplets, but Obito hears nothing but Kakashi's cry, echoing in his ears and burrowing each bloody inch into his bones.

It is the cry of a child that has woken from one nightmare into another.

(:~:)

In the green grass of his mindscape, the original Kakashi feels a physical blow to his gut as the clone merges with him.

His mind shatters to his father's shout.

(:~:)

Kakashi splinters into a million fragments of memory and identity and _time_ dancing in whirlwinds of breathless, iridescence. The stars shake in the world of his mind, falling in showers of luminance that flash painfully bright and blindingly dark all at once, wind cocooning him in an intangible basket as he spins through a world of eyes and emotion, each gaze as fleeting as each feeling. Anger, bitterness, horror; joy, amusement, and warmth; each fill him completely and utterly, only to be snatched away in an instant. Kakashi no longer _exists_ as an entity. He is a void, an empty shell that channels others' memories, broken words and tears welling up inside his heart that might not even be his anymore.

And between each mirrored, leaf-like shard of remembrances, ever staring and ever accusing, is the wheeled sable and scarlet of Obito's sharingan.

Kakashi's feet slam into the grass of his mindscape for the last time, his clone's memories echoing in his shivers. He starts as two hands grasp his shoulders, one large and weathered, the other young and smooth.

Sakumo and Rin smile sadly down at him as they each nod their farewells, their outlines blurring. His Father bends at the waist to press his lips to Kakashi's forehead.

The sky cracks, duck-egg blue falling piece by piece as Kakashi's mindscape shudders as if in an earthquake. Emerald leaves fall from the cracks, dancing on currents of air, and as each one reaches the ground, Kakashi understands a little more.

Training ground three, with its three stumps of wood, blurs like a watercolour painting in rain as Kakashi the jounin slowly returns.

As warm, comforting darkness overwhelms Kakashi's vision, he hears his father and Rin whisper their final words to him.

"_I'll give your love to your mother, my son."_

"_I love you, Kakashi. Save Obito. Please."_

The last piece of his consciousness falls deftly into place, one green leaf among countless others.

Hatake Kakashi is back.

(:~:)

Jiraiya collapses onto his knees as he stares at where Kakashi's clone had stood, barely moments ago. The source of his worry is not whether the kage bunshin is hurt – at this rate, it _had_ to have dispersed – but whether he had pushed enough chakra into the clone so the original Kakashi wouldn't die from extreme chakra exhaustion when he wakes.

_Should_ he wake.

Fukusaku and Shima fuss around his wound, lamenting the loss of his arm. Jiraiya sees right through their plans to divert his thoughts from Kakashi. Numbly, he feels the pain in the stump of his shoulder recede as Shima works a hidden healing jutsu of the toads. With some summoned emergency supplies, Fukusaku bandages the stump of his missing arm.

The two toad sages are about to take their leave when Jiraiya halts them mid-seal with a whispered word.

"_Yahiko."_

"Jiraiya-chan?" Shima enquires.

Jiraiya dry-swallows. "One of the Six Paths was Yahiko, a boy I once taught. After seeing Konan and knowing Nagato was alive, I thought…I hoped that Yahiko was alive. But now I see why Nagato changed in the first place." He wipes blood from the corner of his mouth with a ragged sleeve. "Go," Jiraiya coughs. "I've kept you from your supper long enough. Thank you for your help."

Fukusaku and Shima nod in unison, and a shiver in reality later, are gone.

Jiraiya rubs his face, glad that his warty nose has returned to normal and his hand and feet have lost their toad-like appearance. With a grunt, he picks himself up from the damp floor, barely glancing at the torn ground around him.

As he retrieves his sandals, his bare foot collides with a small, cylindrical metal rod. Jiraiya stares down at it for a moment, a fleeting image of a small, silver-haired child impaled on its dull length.

Jiraiya snatches it up and rams it shallowly into his leg.

The eddying chakra in the metal is soft and fading fast, but Jiraiya still senses its source, like a traveller leaping up tributaries of a river to its spring. The rod smashes into the ground as Jiraiya leaps upwards toward the light.

Now he would have a long, _serious_ talk with his former students.

(:~:)

Kakashi awakens with a jolt, cramped muscles screaming at him as he forces his eyes open. The room tilts alarmingly, and he quickly shuts his sharingan. He cannot afford to waste chakra in his weakened state.

"Welcome back." The voice could once have been humourous.

Kakashi jerks upward, only to find his wrists and ankles bound. "You," he growls.

Uchiha Itachi stares back impassively from his straight-backed chair. "Yes. Me," he returns.

Kakashi groans as he cranes his neck to look at himself in the weak light. The bedclothes are soft against his skin, but that only accentuates the torn mess of his jounin uniform. The muscles in his arms tense as he struggles against his bonds–

Wait. _Muscles?_

Again, Itachi steps in with few dry words. "When I returned to the base, I found you half-drowned in the corridor with Kisame's burnt corpse smouldering in front of you. I put you in here. Your body and clothes returned to normal size about an hour ago." He pauses. "Your mind too, it seems."

"Do you expect me to thank you?" Kakashi retorts with a hint of a snarl. He would have done more, but his head feels as if it has been sledgehammered.

Itachi's eyes are as unreadable as his next answer. "No. I don't expect so, Kakashi-senpai."

"Don't call me that. You don't even deserve to–"

Itachi's chair screeches against stone as he rises. "I must take my leave now. Sasuke will soon be here."

At this, Kakashi stills and gives Itachi a one-eyed stare. Itachi returns his gaze coolly. "What do you intend to do with my student?" Kakashi asks finally.

"That is none of your concern." Itachi reaches over and taps the cuffs on Kakashi's wrist. "These cuffs are timed to release in an hour. You are free to leave then." He removes something from his pocket and places it by Kakashi's head, deftly removing his fingers when Kakashi tries to bite them. "Your hitai-ate," Itachi says. "I found it next to you."

Kakashi watches Itachi pace toward the door, and notices the subtle weariness in his posture. Kakashi wets his dry lips. "Let me ask another question, then. Why are you doing this for me?"

Itachi's voice is blankly analytical as he answers, "I released you from your cell when you were trapped in the body and mind of a child because you were useful to me. You've proven that already by your actions. The answer to your question now is still the same. You might be useful to me."

"You're going to fight Sasuke. How would I be useful to you?"

Itachi pauses at the door. "…Should Sasuke defeat me, he would wish to return to Konoha. Please ensure that he does so."

Twelve different theories had sprung into Kakashi's mind, but nothing could have prepared him for this. He is quite literally stunned into silence.

At the copy-nin's quiet, Itachi nods in Kakashi's direction, not quite a bow, but only just. "Thank you, Kakashi-senpai," he murmurs. "I won't apologise for my previous actions to you. They were necessary. However, I will wish you good fortune in dealing with Tobi."

Before Kakashi can reply, the hem of Itachi's robe disappears around the door, and he is left with nothing but four blank walls and a single flickering light on the ceiling. He shakes his head. An hour is plenty of time to think.

Kakashi begins tensing his muscles from his toes upwards, flexing each one to check for injuries. As he slowly works out the events of the past few days from the hell-like mess that are his and his clone's memories, he closes his eyes as Obito's face flashes before his vision.

It is strange. He would have though he would be a sobbing, broken mush of grief, but the clarity that he experienced as he stood in front of Pain remains with him now. The betrayal had hit him hard, yes. But there is nothing but a deep-seated calm within him, and a tingle in his veins that herald the returning of his chakra. What could have caused this otherworldly understanding?

Perhaps it is Rin's last words to him. They ring far too close to the promise Naruto made Sakura to bring Sasuke back. Kakashi understands some of what Naruto's burden must be, now. He pities him for it, and yet is so, so proud.

His memories now sorted, Kakashi allows himself a small smile as he reviews them with an adult's eye for the first time. Seasoned shinobi as he his, Kakashi looks back with a slight hint of wistfulness. Being a kid had wiped away layers of fortifications around his soul that he had built with hundreds of ANBU missions, deaths and battles. With Jiraiya's every embrace around his little form, Naruto ruffling his hair, Sakura holding back a coo and even Sai hiding a smile, Kakashi's old battle wounds had been healed, and scars on his heart fading.

Now Kakashi can love again, with the same pure trust as that of a child.

Now, to make Obito understand this…

(:~:)

**And there we have it… baby Kakashi is gone. But I'm not done with the babifying jutsu yet! Expect more comedic angsty drama! I'll update next Saturday, so see you all then!**

**Reviews:**

**TheParadoxicalOtaku:**** I admit I had to read over your review twice to understand it. It WAS extremely entertaining to read, though. My main reason for Jiraiya's protectiveness is because Kashi is a child, and so although he's a kage bunshin, Jiraiya is afraid of the pain that the bunshin's memories will carry over to the original. And your puns are hilarious, don't worry. Mine are worse.**

**azfaerydust:**** I hope I answered your questions about Kakashi's chakra in this chapter. He has got the same amount as he did when he was an adult, but I had to add a booster for Kamui. Thank you for your continued reviews. They're always insightful XD**

**harvestangel99:**** Was this good enough? I agonised over whether it fit or not, so I dunno (Eeep!) What do you think?**

**Priest of Pain:**** I know. I'm trying to draw all the threads together, and it's far more stressful a thing to do than I previously thought. I hope this answers some of your musings though. And I totally agree with you about Sasuke. He seems eternally ungrateful for what others did for him.**

**Prescripto13:**** Thank you as always. I was a nervous wreck over structuring this one, but I think I did okay (I hope). See ya XD**

**Rosebunse:**** Quite a peculiar adjective, considering the gory nature of the opening of the last chapter, but I could almost see you smile in that review. Thank you so much **

**VampireDoll666:**** Gomene! I know I shouldn't have, but I couldn't resist. Does this chapter make it up to you?**

**Hektols:**** Thank you as always for reviewing! Teamwork, teamwork… I've got plans for that XD**

**Saoirse-Inti:**** Heartbreaking…I know. I'm guilty of tugging at heartstrings again. On another note, I don't know whether I did enough in this chapter. I hope I didn't disappoint. Another thing – how **_**do**_** you pronounce your penname? I don't want to end up mispronouncing it.**

**Kittyhawk09:**** Thank you for reviewing! Apologies for the long wait.**

**Osprey Eamon:**** Poor Kashi. I suppose Jiraiya should be pitied for losing an arm, but emotional trauma always outweighs physical trauma in my book.**


	11. Getting in Touch with Your Inner Child

**I am SO SORRY this is a day late. I had some last-minute appointments with a friend and I couldn't update until now. Thank you for your patience, and I do hope this chapter isn't too dry. I PROMISE MORE OF EVERYTHING NEXT CHAPTER! And 100 reviews! Thank you for all your support!**

**Review replies at the end. Read the chapter first, so no spoilers!**

(:~:)

The shadows are dancing.

Shikamaru pivots in place, his feet never leaving the pool of sable beneath him. Liquid black tendrils snap about him in shadow-stitches of razor-tipped needles, every shard as volatile as a tentacle and sharp as a fang, twitching exactly to his ever-evolving mind. The shogi board of the battlefield was set not long ago, but now his pieces scatter haphazardly.

Sakura sends explosions of green-tinged chakra everywhere she touches, the Rook who moves in deadly straight lines of brute force. Shikamaru weaves and weasels his way in the unpredictable motions of a Knight. But Hidan and Kakuzu do not function as shogi pieces. They do not even work as a team. Kakuzu is variable; he does not move in any predictable pattern. Normally, Hidan moves as a Lance does, ever forward and never retreating. But should he get his hands on Shikamaru's blood… he would be a Rook and Bishop combined, but never needing to move into enemy territory. The Pawn with the power of a General.

As Shikamaru breaks off another failed Kagemane no jutsu and feels Hidan's scythe whisper past his neck, he evaluates his options.

_Troublesome._

He had planned for Ino and Chouji to be here. Ino the Bishop and Chouji the Promoted Pawn. Quick overtaking of opponents' minds, along with short, powerful moves or steamrolling on Chouji's side. Ino-Shika-Chou… with Shikamaru as a Knight, it would have been perfect.

Sakura might be a good Rook, but at the rate things are going they have two options: retreat, or die.

Shikamaru could never face Asuma if he does either.

(:~:)

Itachi leans back wearily on the worn stone of the throne, closing his eyes momentarily as his aching bones find rest. His eyes do not pain him anymore, but tiredness leak out of them like blood. Or tears. Dark-patterned tomoe paint the wall behind him, and dead centre, above his head, the kanji for 'fox' glares out in bold strokes of black ink. Actually, 'weasel' might be more appropriate… Itachi arranges his limbs in the careless, cross-legged half-slouch of the trained killer, murderer, shinobi…older brother.

Actually, he does so because this is probably the most comfortable position he'll get to sit in before dying.

Itachi raises his head and stares straight ahead, twin sharingan giving him the intense gaze Sasuke would expect him to have. One regret plays with his mind as he waits for his little brother to come – that Sasuke would never know him. Not for real. His plans and actions have deceived Sasuke better than any genjutsu.

But he had made Kakashi swear to bring Sasuke back to Konoha. Ex-ANBU Wolf and Uzumaki Naruto should get the job done.

And then all too soon, Itachi's gaze meets Sasuke's cold, determined stare, Itachi opens his mouth to deliver the first goading comment to push Sasuke over the edge, and Sasuke retorts with a threat that reveals, once and for all, his hate for his older brother.

Itachi wants nothing more than to stagger up on his unsteady feet, poke Sasuke in the forehead and say with a smile, _"Welcome home, Sasuke."_ Instead, he floods his gaze with killing intent and murmurs, "Let's get to it then."

Sasuke's first strike scythes past his neck, severing their brotherhood forever.

(:~:)

Kakashi welcomes the sun's baking warmth as he leaps carefully through the forest. His uniform is so torn that he is rather surprised it doesn't just fall off him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he swears he can hear Minato-sensei laughing with some awful pun at how he looks exactly like a scarecrow now, stick-thin and covered in rags.

At least his pants are intact. Kakashi doesn't fancy running about fighting with one hand occupied in holding them up. His flak jacket has more holes than a sieve, though, and the wind chill from treerunning is certainly not helping.

Not that he is going at anywhere near the pace he should be. Not the muscle-tearing ANBU pace, or the average A-rank mission one. A brief snort escapes him. This situation would be an S-rank, if any. And copy-nin Kakashi is currently…_staggering_ towards the nearest scent of battle.

Upon emerging from the Akatsuki base, Kakashi had immediately sensed three different scents, all carrying the blood, sweat, and metal-tinged chakra of battle. He'd dithered for a while trying to decipher which one belonged to Naruto, but none of the directions had any scent of the Kyuubi at all, so Kakashi was stumped.

In the end he chose the closest scent, which is just as well because he is moving with the _unerring_ grace of an academy student.

When _yet another_ twig nearly pokes him in the eye, Kakashi lets fly a string of colourful expletives, most learnt courtesy of Jiraiya.

He starts swearing for a whole another reason when Hidan's scythe nearly lops off his head.

A blur of pink to his right. "Kakashi-sensei?!"

"Sakura," Kakashi says plainly, surprised. And rather peeved that his chakra is so exhausted he couldn't even sense a fight happening right in front of him.

Sakura's eyes suddenly look dangerously wet, and Kakashi is rather sure that she would have run over and tackled him into a hug if she wasn't so busy avoiding being disembowelled by Kakuzu's snapping fingers.

Hidan's narrow eyes turn slit-like as he turns from a panting Shikamaru and squints at Kakashi instead. "Heeeey," Hidan sleazes slowly, "I know your face from somewhere…" Kakashi raises an eyebrow as Hidan's idiotic sneer grows impossibly wider. "I don't know who you are, punk, but you SHALL BOW TO THE WAY OF JASH-"

"FOR GOODNESS' SAKE, ZOMBIE, SHUT UP!" The words are out of Kakashi's mouth before he realises he force with which he uttered them, or how childish they sound.

Dead silence.

Kakashi blinks in surprise at the sudden stillness. He hadn't expected them to actually do as he says. He suspects Kakuzu has stopped simply out of amusement at what Kakashi might do to Hidan.

So with the silence stretching out, Kakashi raises a hand in a small wave, crinkles his eye into a smile, and says brightly, "Yo!"

The silence is made all the more oppressive, as Hidan is for once completely lost for words.

Feeling not at all like himself, Kakashi continues to speak. "So sorry I'm late – I wandered over here from the base, see, and you will not _believe_ the black-cat infestation in the forest here." He pauses, tilts his head. "But anyway, onto business. It would be very nice if you stopped trying to kill my two lovely students here."

"And why would we do that?" Kakuzu rumbles, black and green eyes emotionless.

Kakashi's voice is velvety smooth, almost criminally so. "Oh, I don't know, Zombie Number Two," he says nonchalantly. "Maybe because before I left, I took the precaution of raiding your armoury and lining your personal vault of cash with explosives. They're set to go off in–" Kakashi looks up at the position of the sun "– ten minutes?" he finishes happily.

Shikamaru's eyes widen slightly, but that doesn't stop the slight grin at the corners of his mouth.

Kakuzu gives Kakashi a startled look that appears completely out of place on his features, calls out a quick, "Sorry, partner, got to bail," at Hidan, and barrels out of the clearing before Sakura can even gasp in a breath of relief.

Kakashi grins at Hidan's dumbfounded expression. "Give it about another fifteen seconds," Kakashi mutters.

A muffled _boom_ reverberates through the air, followed rapidly by several more.

The burnt, sweet smell of roasted Kakuzu drifts towards them.

"You guys really need to do something about your armoury," Kakashi drawls. "There were so many exploding tags in there! I didn't have any idea how powerful they were, so I just dumped them all back there." He pauses. "Well, when I say _dumped_, I mean 'strategically placed them to guide someone into a chain reaction', but otherwise, it was a walkover."

A frown creases his mask. "Actually, I'm not sure Kakuzu's all dead yet," Kakashi muses. "He might be _partially_ dead, though…I'm pretty sure that's not the same as _all_ dead…right?"

Sakura's brow creases in worry as she examines her sensei erratic behaviour.

Hidan gives Kakashi an incredulous look and swipes at him with his scythe, but Kakashi's form shivers in mid-air and he shunshins to Sakura's side. "You know," he says contemplatively, ducking another swing, "You Akatsuki are far more dense than intel says you are."

"SHUT UP!" Hidan shrieks. "YOU'RE ANNOYING!"

"Yare yare," Kakashi whistles, waving a hand. "I took a leaf out of your book for that. You're as annoying as you were when I was two feet tall, or even more so."

A chuckle from behind Hidan causes him to reverse his grip and fling out his scythe at Shikamaru.

Shikamaru's grin slips off his face as he reaches up to a tell-tale line of scarlet on his cheek.

Hidan stares at the slick sheen of new blood on the tip of his scythe in morbid delight. A finger finds the liquid, and a moment later, slips it into his mouth. "Aaaah, that's the stuff," Hidan breathes. In an eyeblink, the symbol of Jashin is drawn under his feet.

"Shikamaru!" Sakura screams, but a gloved hand suddenly rests on her shoulder, and she turns to find Kakashi's sneaky eye-smile laughing silently. "Have more faith in him," he whispers to her.

Shikamaru falls to his knees, eyes shadowed, as Hidan screams in exultation, bringing a spear down through his heart. Sakura whimpers, her emerald eyes snapping toward Shikamaru, expecting a fountain of crimson from his chest.

Hidan frowns. "What in the name of the Sage of Six–"

Shikamaru's grin blazes forth like a triumphant beacon of war. "Got you there, didn't I? That blood you got isn't mine. It's your partner's."

"Oh, thanks for the favour, Hidan!" Kakashi quips brightly. "I wasn't sure before, but Kakuzu's definitely _all_ dead now."

Hidan opens his white-black mouth to yell obscenity at the world in general, but shadows wrap around his throat in a necklace of supple sable and his swear words cut off in a strangled _gurk._

"Kagemane no jutsu, complete," Shikamaru sighs, rising to his feet. But suddenly all trace of laziness is gone, and his voice drops an octave. "Look at me, Zombie," Shikamaru hisses, the faintest hint of a snarl on his lips. "I'm Nara Shikamaru. I'm cleansing the shinobi world from filth like you."

"What can you do about it, _baaaka?!"_ Hidan retorts, his voice muffled through the shadow gag. "I'm still alive even if my head is cut off!"

Shikamaru promptly ignores this and looks to Sakura. "Do you have enough chakra left to make a hole?" he asks quietly.

"Y…yeah…" Sakura replies, still in shock from the sudden change of events. Chakra glows around her fist as she plunges it into the ground, creating a deep crater of shattered rock and pulverised earth. Kakashi steps back smartly.

"Kageyose no jutsu." Shadows wrap around Hidan securely, hauling him over into the pit. The zombie howls curses every inch of the way, as if the shadows are dragging him to hell. Shikamaru's eyes set as needles of shadow reach into his weapons pouch, removing his entire stash of exploding tags and slapping them unceremoniously onto Hidan. One is smoothed over Hidan's mouth, silencing him.

"I don't want to hear any last words of yours," Shikamaru mutters, his voice forcibly even. A spark from a kunai leaps hungrily onto the tags.

The explosion is all at once a giant's relieved sigh of flame, blistering heat and a wordless scream from a mouth with its very tongue blown off, reeking of death denied.

Hidan glare from between two rocks is as hateful as ever over his shattered body.

Kakashi palms a bomb from somewhere in his ruined flak jacket and hands it to Shikamaru. "I kept one, out of some childish inclination," he says gently. "Seal this matter yourself."

Shikamaru feels the weight of the bomb in his hand, even as an unfathomable weight lifts off his shoulders. A numb hand slips into his pocket and comes out with Asuma's lighter clenched tight in white fingers. A spark, and a flickering flame dances above the polished metal, catching the fuse.

"Sayonara, sensei," Shikamaru murmurs. As the weight leaves his hand to spiral into the pit below, something unspeakably warm touches his shoulder. Asuma's hand. "And thank you," Shikamaru adds, turning to watch Asuma fade away.

This explosion, when it comes, does not reek of death. It lights up the sky, like fireworks.

(:~:)

Tenzo tries to quell the panic in his heart as he sprints through the underbrush. He had briefly considered stopping to help Naruto and Hinata, but decided that anything strong enough to disperse one of his wood-clones had to be giving Shikamaru and Sakura more trouble. But getting to the actual battle proved quite difficult, given the ridiculous number of traps Shikamaru had set to guard their backs on the way. As Tenzo prises another shuriken out of his butt and deftly dodges another barrage, he breathes a silent prayer of thanks that he is knows Shikamaru somewhat. Otherwise, he would have been a human pincushion by the time he could certain patterns in the traps.

The scent of a recent battlefield drifts into his porcelain mask. Tenzo quickens his pace, sweeping for enemy presences, feeling for the slightest sound at his fingertips–

"YO!" A dark shape descends from the heavens and glomps the ANBU in a hug.

"GAAARGH!" Tenzo squeals as he rips the limbs of the shinobi-animal-_thing_ away from him, flipping unsuccessfully in midair to slam face-first into the grass below.

Starbursts in his vision. And a mouthful of foliage.

Something lands next to him with a soft _thump,_ and a decidedly human voice laughs, "Maa, maa, Tenzo! You didn't have to faceplant just for my amusement!"

Tenzo clears the dirt out of the eye-holes in his mask and squints up at a very familiar face. "Kashi…Kakashi-senpai…" he croaks weakly. "You're…back?"

Kakashi's expression immediately changes into one of embarrassed gratefulness. "Oh, don't cry, Tenzo!" he gushes – oh yes, the great Hatake Kakashi _gushes_ – adding just a hint of a tremor into his voice. "Did you miss me that much?"

Tenzo scrabbles for Kakashi's ankle, intending to flip him, but the soft chuckles of his senpai simply grow in volume as Kakashi eludes him. Tenzo lets out a growl. "What. Was. That."

"Oh, _that_?" Kakashi replies sleazily. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tenzo curses Genma for teaching Kakashi cockiness. "No homo, Tenzo. Just thought you needed a hug after your _obvious_ search for one a few days ago."

"I…I…" Tenzo splutters, spitting out mud. "You were eighteen months old…"

"And wasn't I the perfect example of the extraterrestrial demon that so many people call _children_?" Kakashi asks gleefully.

Tenzo tries to say something, but finds he can't.

"Ooh, squirrel."

"WHAT? WHERE?" Tenzo's voice rises in horror. Images of toddler Kakashi traumatising the brown ball of fur race through his mind.

Kakashi's laughter doubles him over.

"…Please, senpai… no more…"

Shikamaru strides over slowly, hands stuffed in his pockets. He blinks down at the mud-covered ANBU and begins to smile. "I should've known."

Kakashi sighs. "Ne, Tenzo, take that mask off! You're not going to fool Shikamaru with your ANBU getup."

With a huff, Yamato removes his mask. "Hokage-sama going to kill me."

"Yamato-taichou!" Sakura calls as she approaches. "Did Tsunade-shishou send you after us?"

"Yeah," Yamato answers shortly. He stalks off to the side to clean his mask.

Sakura turns to Kakashi. "Ano, Kakashi-sensei?" Her question is edged with worry.

"Yes, Sakura?" Kakashi says gently. Yamato hides a pout at the blatant favouritism.

"I'm really glad you're alright," she blurts. "But you seem…different."

A smile quirks at the corner of Kakashi's mask. "I got in touch with my inner child," he answers jokingly. A moment passes, and his face drops in horror. "Don't tell Gai. Please."

Sakura frowns, not entirely convinced, but Shikamaru interrupts with more serious matters. "Kakashi-sensei," he says, "Since you're the highest-ranked member here, do you want to take over captaincy of this mission?"

Kakashi rubs the back of his neck and grimaces as he thinks it through. "Maybe that would be best," he concedes. "I've got intel that could be classified as an S-rank secret, at its lowest. I don't have time to explain it now, so you all have to follow my commands without question. My orders might seem strange, but that's only because of what I know. Understood?"

"Hai, senpai!"

"Yes, sensei."

"Yeah. Troublesome."

"Alright, then," Kakashi grins, "Let's go get Sasuke."

(:~:)

With one arm ripped off, blood pooling from his mouth, numerous stab wounds dotting his chest, and skin as cratered as the surface of the moon, Jiraiya thought _he_ looked sort of bad.

And then he saw Nagato and changed his mind.

"You look like hell," Jiraiya manages, a wry smile tugging at his lips.

Peering out to the rain from his half-crouched position inside all that equipment, Nagato replies with a supremely dignified coughing fit, emaciated chest heaving under a sheen of sweat. Konan immediately materialises in front of him, hands raised in defense.

"Oh, stop it, Konan," Jiraiya mumbles, waving his right hand, his _only_ hand. "I've come to talk."

"And yet you only do so when I've lost all means of fighting," Nagato returns icily. A pause. "Do Konoha use children as young as that boy now? Of all hard-hearted shinobi, sensei, I would have never thought _you_ would agree to this."

Jiraiya sighs, abandoning all pretence at swagger and slumping to the floor. "Kakashi is no child. He only appeared to be one."

Nagato's voice grates like rocks along a riverbed as he replies. "And yet the Shinobi world continue to use their own young for war, do they not? Konan, Yahiko and I are prime examples."

Jiraiya's gaze suddenly hardens, stormy irises darkening even further. "Why did you do what you did to Yahiko?" he snarls.

An edge creeps into Nagato's words, as though he hides behind yet another veil. "He died for my sake, and for the sake of bringing peace. I brought him back as one of the Six Paths so he could continue his vision."

"And what vision might that be?" Jiraiya groans. His breath grows short; weariness covers him like a blanket.

"To unite the world through pain–"

"Yeah, yeah," Jiraiya coughs. "Stop right there, Nagato. I don't want to hear all that crap again. Kakashi was right, you know. _That's stupid._ There's no way in hell that your plan would work; at best, it would lead to rebellion and civil war. Are you even hearing yourself speak?" He turns to Konan. "My dear girl, haven't you ever doubted the validity of his words?"

Konan narrows her eyes and sinks further into her stance.

Perhaps Nagato sees the uncertainty in the set of her shoulders, as he replies with a sharp, cruel jab. "You used to speak of a way of uniting the Shinobi and stopping this cycle of death, Jiraiya-sensei. Have you gone back on _your_ ridiculous words? There is no such thing as _peace_!"

Jiraiya side-steps a chakra spear from Nagato with sluggish tiredness. "You're far too exhausted to control your chakra any more, Nagato. Stop with the tricks and let me talk."

Nagato dips his chin. "You speak as if you have a solution."

"I don't."

A terrible leer of triumph splits Nagato's face in two.

Jiraiya cracks a slow grin, eyes wrinkling. "I don't, but I know someone who does."

"Who?"

"His name is Uzumaki Naruto. A student of mine." Jiraiya speaks softly through his injuries, but his pride in Naruto nevertheless shines through. "You're right in a way. Pain corrupts people. It corrupted me, and Konan, and certainly you. But Naruto will never change. If there is anyone who can find a solution to this problem, it will be him."

Nagato's voice has changed now. It does not lose any of his bitterness, but it isn't quite so mocking. "And how do you know he will succeed?"

"Because I believe he can, of course!" Jiraiya declares. "He was named after the main character of my book, _The Tales of the Gusty Shinobi._ If he can't bring about peace with the rules, then he'll _change_ the rules! He is the closest thing I have to a legacy…and I will name my sequel for him."

Konan suddenly straightens out of her stance, hands locked to her sides. She falters between bowing to Jiraiya and turning to Nagato.

Nagato's next words are no retort, nor argument. He seems younger, somehow, as he asks, "What about me, sensei?"

"You? I had hoped you were the one, you know," Jiraiya smiles sadly. "If you hadn't turned down the wrong path and instead used your power to bring about peace another way, I would have been proud to call you my student, and proud to guide that revolutionary." And softer: "If Naruto were here, he'd give you a sound ticking off."

There is silence for a while in the gloom.

A muffled_ thump_ as Konan runs into Jiraiya and throws her arms around him, her tears hitting the floor in crystalline drops.

Then as the rain diminishes into a drizzle, Nagato's sobs echo through the space. "I'm sorry, sensei. I went against everything you taught me."

Jiraiya's quiet laughter. "Nah, it's good to have you back, Nagato."

(:~:)

There is blood everywhere.

It is flung into the air in a fine spray, slick underfoot and iron-heavy in the nose. The world is bleached crimson in sloppy brushstrokes, layer upon layer of luminescent scarlet painted on with jutsus and taijutsu moves that once were graceful but now are simply twisted instruments of battle.

Sasuke twirls his chokuto in a circle of silver through red, and the blade lunges toward his brother's heart even as Itachi's eyes pinwheel into mangekyou sharingan.

Reality slows into dreamlike, nightmarelike pace as Amateratsu and Chidori dance toward each other.

A stupid, raw-throated yell from behind: "Sasuke! Teme!"

Jarring, Sasuke slips in a pool of mixed blood.

The last thing he sees as he begins to fall is Itachi's horror-filled eyes.

(:~:)

**Yes, yes. I'm evil. I'm also not that good a writer, not for this chapter at least. **** This chapter was necessary, though, and I hope the light banter and the philosophical stuff and the sad angsty brother stuff all mixed together into something resembling an okay chapter. Review please? I really don't know whether this is okay. And…who will I babify with the chibi no jutsu next chapter? MUAHAHAHA!**

**Replies to reviews:**

**Prescripto 13:**** As always, your reviews make me laugh with delight. "Cross between enlightenment and de-/evolution," eh? Pardon the term, but your reviews always have so much spunk that I wish every reviewer as like you. Thank you so much.**

**azfaerydust:**** I'm glad I managed to portray Obito and Kakashi's relationship well, especially since Kakashi was so small. Thank you so much for continuing to review like this – it gives me purpose in writing.**

**Saoirse-Inti:**** Now I know how to pronounce it! Thank you! And Jiraiya's always been one of the worst deaths for me. I didn't like people dying just so their students could get stronger. I don't like that pattern in Kishi's work at all. That's why I saved him, and Asuma too!**

**harvestangel99:**** Thank you as always! I love how you don't mind spoilers. It means you can enjoy as many fanfics as you like without any worries. I admit I'm sort of like that too… although I do try my best to finish something before I go fanfictioning. I let myself be spoiled on everything else XD**

**DMCP:**** Thanks for the heads up. I changed the chapter number immediately after. If I didn't there would have been some confusion, so thanks for the help. I'm sorry you didn't get to see the chibi no jutsu in this one, but I promise to put it in soon.**

**Osprey Eamon:**** Itachi's always been a conflicted one… but yeah, turning everything on its head is fun, especially with serious characters like Itachi and Kakashi. And your review inspired some ideas about Chibi no jutsu, so thank you very much!**

**Rosebunse:**** Yeah, if I dragged it out anymore then it would have gone dry. But then again, this chapter seemed so dull **** I promise I'll give you a better one next time!**

**Yungsun:**** Thank you for reviewing! Cute, yes. And Chibi Kakashi will return!**

**Hektols:**** Thanks as always! A load of things happened, yeah, and I created so many situations in the process. XP Hopefully I managed to draw them together again. I'm fixing a load of things. Kakashi's got a plan! ehehehehe…**

**VampireDoll666:**** Don't worry! I'm going to explore how their characters change and their differences from outward appearances. I'm not **_**that**_** mean XD**

**kittyhawk09:**** Thank you so much for reviewing. I'm so sorry the next chapter I gave you was this one. I didn't feel nearly as good writing this as the one before. I hope I can make it up to you for the next one**

**Gelasia Kidd:**** So sorry for the cliffie! And this one as well XP And I've got plans for the future of this fic! Thanks for reviewing! (And I overloaded the exclamation marks. Heh.)**

**jayley:**** You've got a really nice penname. Not nearly as much happened in this chapter but it had to be done. Did you like it much?**

**TheParadoxicalOtaku:**** Nah, they're not a pain in the neck! They're fun to decipher and read! Your obvious enthusiasm gives your reviews an awesome kick. One question though…German sparkle party?**

**Beloved Daughter:**** Sorry you had to wait a week and a half. *bows in apology* Thank you for reviewing!**

**freakingbored123:**** I do hope this chapter didn't make you as bored as your name says you are XD Thanks for the support!**

**William de Worde:**** Yup, "Ugh" is sometimes the only way to summarise the feels of a scene. Thank you for your continued opinion. To be honest I was most worried about making you happy with the last chapter because you expressed your thoughts about Obito and Kakashi the most. So it was awesome that you liked it! Thank you so much!**


	12. Gold, Silver, and Orange

**I'm alive, yeah. Sorry for the month-long wait. Uni preparation and everything is really taxing. And then I got addicted, believe it or not, to Star Wars of all fandoms. Anyway, I got inspired to write more of this when I went to an anime convention two weeks ago and got a life-sized version of Sasuke's chokuto. It's made of painted wood and the balance is as good as any practice sword, so the muse was fuelled while I did katas with the blade. XD REVIEW REPLIES AT THE END!**

**Summary of the story's progression:**

**Jiraiya has convinced Nagato to allow Naruto to think up a solution to pain. He has lost an arm in the battle. Kakashi is currently heading toward Sasuke and Itachi's position with Shikamaru, Sakura, and Yamato. Kakashi's mind is still slightly childish as he just reverted from his child-form, but the knowledge that Tobi is Obito is jarring him out of it.**

**I've included the last bit of the last chapter to make it clearer. Enjoy.**

(:~:)

_There is blood everywhere._

_It is flung into the air in a fine spray, slick underfoot and iron-heavy in the nose. The world is bleached crimson in sloppy brushstrokes, layer upon layer of luminescent scarlet painted on with jutsus and taijutsu moves that once were graceful but now are simply twisted instruments of battle._

_Sasuke twirls his chokuto in a circle of silver through red, and the blade lunges toward his brother's heart even as Itachi's eyes pinwheel into mangekyou sharingan._

_Reality slows into dreamlike, nightmarelike pace as Amateratsu and Chidori dance toward each other._

_A stupid, raw-throated yell from behind: "Sasuke! Teme!"_

_Jarring, Sasuke slips in a pool of mixed blood._

_The last thing he sees as he begins to fall is Itachi's horror-filled eyes._

(:~:)

In that instant in which gravity tightens its tenacious hold on him, Sasuke feels his gorge rise in disgust. Part of it might originate from the actual feeling of falling, but Sasuke finds himself surprised that he is disgusted with _himself_. This is not a new emotion, certainly. But it is no doubt applied strangely. He has felt disgust before at a hundred others…

The Sandaime for discouraging his revenge.

Iruka for his skewed idea of fairness_._

Sakura for her infatuation with him.

Kakashi for holding him back.

Itachi.

And Naruto for being...Naruto. Rival, friend, seeker, his everlasting, light-filled smile, stupid cries of _"I'm going to be Hokage!"_ with simple naiveté.

For all these people, Sasuke had felt hate, anger, and disgust. But he had never felt as disgusted with himself as he does now. Somehow he feels he should have possibly done something more with his life than waste it training with a snake just to burn into a mud-smear now.

And he by the time he gets over being disgusted, Itachi's Amateratsu is almost upon him, killing intent pulsing.

A flash of orange.

A scream echoes through the cavernous space, and something in Sasuke's heart twists painfully. The back of his head makes painful, brutal contact with the mossy floor. Panic lances through him – after hearing Itachi's words just before Naruto called, Sasuke knows that his eyes would be taken as Itachi's new light, just as Madara took his own brother's. He would be blind, broken, and left to wither. Horror overwhelms his senses, literally blinding him for a moment.

Dimly, Sasuke registers that the sea of roiling killing intent surrounding them wavers, and vanishes.

Sasuke blinks at the spikes of blond hair inches from his face and kicks Naruto away from him with a savage snarl. Sasuke staggers to his feet, chest heaving, as he blinks away tears from the smoke. The screams are still continuing – he turns to find the source of the noise, and his feet root themselves into the floor with pure, unadulterated horror.

Naruto's cry howls into new, terrifying heights as he writhes in the billowing black flames of Amateratsu, carving lines of vicious sable ink in the grey canvas of the floor with brushstrokes of agony. Each motion of his helpless limbs leaves pools of dark fire licking at empty tiles.

Sasuke heaves in frantic breaths, adrenaline coursing through his veins. His mind struggles to compute what had happened; something suspiciously like a mix of guilt and terror.

_Stupid dobe._ The two words resound numbly in his consciousness, wavering between insult and gratitude.

"Naruto-kun!" Hinata is but a blur of indigo hair as she darts past Sasuke to Naruto's side.

Sasuke feels a momentary burst of relief that Sakura doesn't appear to be here. The last straw would be her crying at his feet or trying to kill him herself. He needs to _focus_ on the present moment.

And it hurts far too much to think of her now.

A glance back at his older brother reveals more. Itachi stares at Sasuke with an unnatural intensity, albeit without killing intent. Gone is the nonchalant gaze that grazed over him like he was nothing but air; Sasuke glimpses a spark of – dare he think it – _relief_ in Itachi's unwavering sharingan.

No. Impossible.

If Sasuke thought he hated Itachi before, it is nothing compared to the icy torrent of murderous venom in Sasuke's heart. Somehow, Naruto's anguished sobs of pain echo between his ears – and with it, a clarion-clear _rage._ _How dare Itachi do such a thing to Naruto? _

He pulls up short. Worry? For_ Naruto? _With an effort, he pushes aside this sudden concern for his rival's wellbeing.

Sasuke feels the cold steel of his chokuto thrum in response to his heart as he tosses aside his doubt and pours rivulets of icy chakra into the blade. He does not even raise his sword in a salute; Itachi does not deserve even that, the lowest of respects. Sasuke lets his chakra dance. And coalesce into lightning.

"Chidori nagashi!"

Lightning, burning in numbing fire, lances down the blade and into the floor, spreading in a crystalline, ever-changing web of pure energy towards Itachi's feet. Itachi is standing on the ground one moment, and twisting in the air the next.

Sasuke's chokuto is a glistening arc of quicksilver, singing with his killing intent and chakra combined, deadly beautiful as its owner's dance. Kunai meets sword-edge in a shower of sparks, an inhuman shriek of agony of metal on metal. The cacophony of strikes sings a terrible song against their movements. Younger and older brother alike are ruthless, relentless, as Sasuke abandons chokuto for shuriken, flechettes of metal darting about them in a spray of sharp rain–

True to his namesake, Itachi weasels through Sasuke's guard and captures his wrists, pinning him against the wall. A punch to his gut later, Sasuke blearily acknowledges that Naruto has stopped screaming – he must have lost consciousness. "Your friends are a nuisance," Itachi states plainly, eyes flicking momentarily to where Hinata frantically douses Naruto with chakra, trying to sustain him. "But they aren't anything but loyal," Itachi muses, his gaze boring into Sasuke like instruments of torture. "Why would he die for you when you've caused him so much pain? They're loyal. Which is more than I can say for _you._"

"Watch your own words, _traitor_," Sasuke snarls.

The pinwheel of Itachi's mangekyo sharingan forces Sasuke to stare into their bottomless depths. "To gain the eternal mangekyo sharingan…" Itachi murmurs, circling one of Sasuke's eyes with weasel's fingers. "This is my reality... give me your light!"

Sasuke's howl of agony echoes Naruto's as his world shatters like a glass mosaic under gale-force, knives of silvered glass and red-tipped eyes dancing a bloody sequence of lost light and eternal darkness.

Somewhere in this escalating whirlpool of fragmented reality, Sasuke registers a spike of a terrible, animalistic chakra, and Hinata's cry as the black flames below her hands are engulfed with a cloak of glistening red chakra clouds.

Naruto's jaws yawn wide in a roar of unhindered devastation as six tails explode out of his back into spears of vermilion-tipped scarlet.

(:~:)

The silence would be perfect, if not for the guttural, reined-in breathing of a demon.

Naruto opens his eyes to sickly yellow-bronze walls, lapping waves, and five hundred tons of Kyuubi. Wearily, he raises his tired stare from the pool of black ink pooling around his knees to meet the unblinking ochre eye of the nine-tailed fox, as round as a black-slitted shield.

Kurama's voice holds centuries of malice, each word dripping with killing intent as heavy and suffocating as crude oil. "Naruto…destroy everything that causes you pain. Give me your soul. And I will rescue you from your pain."

Naruto's hand moves of its own accord, wavering above the seal – two kanji, _fuuyin_, painted in bold brushstrokes of sable on snow, fragile ink on paper. Whimsical, really, that the key to a prison holding such a terrifying monstrosity could rustle so delicately, give away so easily as his finger slips innocuously underneath and pulls back ever so slightly–

A flash of yellow past his fingers.

A lightning bolt of _silver_ by his heart.

Two voices, young and old, raised in admonition: "No!"

A pressure on his arm, fatherly, firm, _painful_, and a vice about his calf, a small warmth digging into his knee–

Narrow azure eyes meet wide cerulean ones as two fingers come together amid the Kyuubi's roar.

_Snap._

Naruto shudders as he comes back to himself, reeling in the embrace of the Yondaime Hokage.

The world is light. The ground shimmers in silver-limned gold, liquid metal that mirrors the huddled forms above, the very air pure and sweet as Naruto gasps in a breath he did not know he was holding. Chakra permeates the space around them and bubbles in chuckling waves right _through_ him, sunlight, moonlight, birdsong and raindrops. Luminance dances about them in breezes and eddies of laughing melody, an invisible garden, clear as water and yet filled with unspeakable, unbreakable _life._

A choked laugh escapes Naruto.

His mindscape is not a prison, after all. It is a forest of light, empty and whole in a perfect paradox.

Naruto feels the arm around him relax, and push him back, until he once more meets that piercing, ice-blue gaze.

Minato tilts his head and chuckles once, the sound tumbling over his lips like water from a waterfall, high and low and a chorus of joy. One word. "Naruto."

Naruto feels his jaw hit the floor as he stares what could be own reflection, but as if an artist had repainted him. This man's golden hair is longer, eyes just one shade of blue darker, jawline thinner but somehow more _refined_, his smile more catching and his bearing far nobler. Regal, even.

"Yondaime," he splutters, staggering back over the weight on his leg. He probably should have bowed.

Minato simply looks at him sadly, the ends of his hitai-ate wavering in the gentle breeze.

Naruto's next words are not his own, but the moment they leave his lips he knows them to be true. "You're my father."

"Yes." Minato reaches out, graceful fingers halting just short of Naruto's cheek. "You're my son."

Naruto's knees finally give out and he feels the pressure around his calf cease as he collapses to the ground, the mirrored surface cool on the pads of his fingers.

He finds himself face-to-face with a pair of inquisitive grey eyes.

"Ei'yo," Kashi says plainly, undisturbed by Naruto's undignified shriek of shock.

"Kashi-sensei?!"

"Ah, yes," Minato murmurs as he crouches. "Why _are_ you here, little one?" One hand gently steadies Naruto's shoulder, while the other affectionately rubs Kashi's small head.

The toddler makes his shrug travel all along his two-foot tall height. "Missed Nawu-baka," he lisps, pointing a chubby finger in Naruto's face. "Missed you too, Mina'o-sensei," he adds as he gazes at the older man with adorable puppy eyes.

"How?" Naruto protests. His voice drops with horror. "Don't tell me he's dea–"

"No." Minato's tone is firm. "I don't think he is." Kashi giggles with pleasure as Minato ruffles his hair, and clambers up into Minato's lap eagerly, burying his face into the white haori. "This could be a leftover chakra impression from him," Minato muses. "Like how I left my chakra in you when I sealed the Kyuubi – but he must have done it unintentionally. Otherwise he wo–"

The rest is cut of in an uncharacteristically strangled _gurk_ as Naruto's fist sinks into his side.

Clinging to the stumbling Minato like a particularly stubborn silver koala, Kashi's mirth explodes forth in maniacal cackles. "Again!" he crows. "Again!"

Gritting his teeth past a sudden film of moisture over his vision, Naruto obliges. Blindly. Minato evades each weak strike with utter, elegant grace, haori fanning out behind him in a silken flag of white. "Naruto!" he exclaims, partly in exasperation and partly in confusion. Kashi whoops with each crest and trough of Minato's perfect dodges.

Naruto does not reply, but his lips press tighter, firmer, until they are but a white line of suppressed emotion below a threat of rainfall from twin pale blue skies.

Minato's eyes soften. This time, the name is a sigh of understanding. "Naruto." He tries to pour so much into the word – an apology, regret, pride, _love._ Naruto's next punch lands in a war-calloused, weaponless palm. A killer's hand, a kunai's grip, a Hokage's fist.

But above all, Minato's touch is a father's caress.

Kashi squeals a child's squeal of amusement as Minato throws his arms around his son, in the process trapping the other little form in the middle of it all. In the sudden silence, the first raindrop falls, pure, undiluted. The rest follow in a cascade. Sixteen years' worth.

"Otou-san," Naruto mumbles through his tears. "Tou-chan. Daddy." His words are muffled by Minato's shoulder.

Kashi wriggles down from the crushing confines of the hug and drops to the ground with a huff. With a smile big enough to permanently crease his mask, he bobs up and down on his heels. He doesn't quite know what is going on, but something tells him he should be _happy_. The bobbing escalates spontaneously into ecstatic leaps and somersaults of childish glee.

Minato spares a grin at Kashi's rather astonishing gymnastics as he tightens his embrace. "How old are you now, Naru?" he asks, quietly.

He feels Naruto's smile in the fabric of his haori. "Sixteen."

"I lost track of time." Minato closes his eyes. "Sixteen already… I've watched you, Naruto. And I couldn't be prouder. And more sorry." With a gentle push, he shifts his hands to his son's shoulders and examines him as Naruto scrubs away the last of his tears. "I didn't want to seal the Kyuubi into you," Minato says. "But how could I place suffering on any other child except for mine? Call me a coward, if you will, Naruto – but I was Hokage. It was not my sacrifice to make, but it had to be done."

Naruto meets his father's gaze full-on. "Nah," he hiccups. "I'm the Yondaime's kid. You were my hero growing up, and now you're my dad. I'll deal."

Minato's eyes curve into a smile in return.

Naruto's head drops. "I'm sure that _I'm_ the coward here," he mutters despondently. A loose fist cuffs him about the ear, not ungentle, but not warm, either. The other hand jabs into his stomach, rebuilding the seal in a blazing moment of heat and pain. Naruto braces for cutting words of reprimand, but none come.

"You're more like Kakashi than I thought," Minato sighs. Beside them, Kashi stops mid-leap in surprise and lands on his rear with a muffled _thump._

"What?"

Minato does not answer immediately, instead reaching for the little tot and placing him on his shoulders firmly. Kashi's hands close securely around Minato's two flowing locks of hair that frame his face. "Kakashi… used to be cold. Distant," he begins. "Something happened during the war that changed that. I want to tell you about him, but it isn't my place to do so, just as it wasn't Jiraiya's place to tell you about me. But more importantly, please answer this question. I'd like to know something."

Naruto knows he sounds wary. "…Okay, Otou-chan."

Minato's voice is uncertain. That in itself is enough to snap anyone to attention – Normally, _reassurance_ emanates from the Yondaime. "When you became his student, did Kakashi ever seem…distracted?"

"Eh-to… apart from reading those boring books of his, no."

"Let me rephrase this," Minato says wearily. "Did he ever spend long periods of time in front of the Hokage monument, or the Memorial Stone?" Atop his head, Kashi blinks twice, the words somehow registering. The next moment, his face is buried in Minato's golden spikes of hair. Small whimpering sounds escape him.

Naruto looks worriedly at little Kashi. "Well, he's late to everything, so I don't see how he could–" He cuts himself off mid-sentence, wide-eyed.

"I take it you've just realised?" Minato says sadly. One of his hands clasps around the tiny fist in his hair.

His son's words come out hoarse. "D'you… do you think the chibi no jutsu could change him?"

"It already has," Minato replies. "But it's impossible to know to what extent, or for good or ill."

They stand wordless for a moment, the turning point between two generations, two eras, with the bridge between them but the shadow of a child sobbing into his teacher's hair.

"Kashi-kun," Minato says after awhile, "Don't cry." As the sniffling ceases, he turns to Naruto once more. "Naruto. My son." Even as those words leave him, they seem to glow with praise. And warning. "I don't have much chakra left. I have to tell you something. It's about the night your mother and I died."

Naruto nods, the burden of news locking his jaw.

As his father speaks, Naruto listens; and he finds a strange sense of familiarity in the masked man of Minato's undoing.

(:~:)

Kakashi feels the surge of the giddy, childish joy leave him as his team nears the smoke column that rends the sky in two, visible from miles around. Not that they need it to tell them where to go – _that_ chakra is all around them, seething, roiling, the rabid scent of _fox._

Yamato hisses as his hand burns anew, searing a kanji number into his skin. _Hachi._ Eight tails. "We don't have much time, senpai," he whispers hollowly.

"I know." Kakashi's reply is so curt and command-like that Shikamaru's head snaps toward him, Sakura's following a moment later.

"My apologies, everyone," Kakashi says suddenly. "I wasn't…myself, earlier. I'm quite used to dealing with traumatic events as a shinobi. All shinobi have to. Seeing what I saw with a child's eyes unhinged me a little."

"Kakashi-sensei…do you need a healing session?" Sakura asks hesitantly.

"No. The opposite." Silver hair catches the orange edge of flame ahead. "I've got some rather _novel_ ideas." The bizzare desire to laugh wells up inside him.

Shikamaru opens his mouth to ask more – no piece of information is ever unimportant – but a roar shakes the boughs above, Yamato nearly keels over clutching his hand, and the ionic-bitter tang of metallic chakra coats his tongue, gagging him.

The kyuubi towers overhead, but _wrong,_ all raw muscle and no fur, the tiny figure of Hyuuga Hinata clinging to the crest of its bloody head, a necklace with a crystal charm, the Shodaime's crystal, clenched in her white-knuckled hand.

(:~:)

Minato is fading. Kashi is too, the echo of an echo that was once Hatake Kakashi, ANBU captain and Jounin. A last, desperate embrace between father and son, Kashi's short limbs circling the two blond heads as he dances from white haori to orange jumpsuit and back.

Naruto forces himself back and makes a formal bow to Kashi, who still sits astride Minato's broad shoulders. "Arigato, Kashi-sensei," Naruto murmurs. "I learnt a lot from you, even though you didn't say much."

Kashi beams happily in return, undiluted joy in his eyes. "Sayonara!" he chirps the meaning of the word perhaps lost on him, or burst into bright light by the mind of a child.

Naruto turns to Minato. "Tou-chan." _Don't go._

Minato's smile is a crescent moon's reflection under the starry pools of azure that are his eyes. "Naruto." _I believe in you._

As their forms dissolve into liquid starlight, Naruto thinks he sees two hands raised in farewell – One large and tanned, and one tiny and gloved.

And then colour and sound and heat and _air_ rush into his senses, and Naruto opens his eyes to hell.

(:~:)

**This chapter was so difficult to write. It really was. I'm on the ending arc now, though, so it'll resolve quickly, in two chapters or so. Kashi may seem gone now, but I might bring him back for a brief, but important appearance – that is, if you all want me to. I've got so many ideas on how to end this fic – I'll just have to put it in writing now. See you next week. Tell me what you think I should do.**

**Replies to reviews:**

**Rosebunse:**** *bows in apology* I'm so sorry for keeping you waiting. You always leave me lovely reviews, so I hope this one makes up for it.**

**azfaerydust:**** You're one of my oldest readers, actually, like Rosebunse. I'm offering you a bow of apology too. I've got a master plan for the Uchiha. ALL the three Uchiha… hehehe.**

**Prescripto13:**** Thanks for not giving up on my writing. The child of prophecy… I'm still working out how that will fit into the fic, but I've got definite ideas at the ending. Do forgive me for the wait.**

**VampireDoll666:**** …Well, are you happy you got Kashi back? You're another one of my most trusted readers, by the way, so… *hugs* Thanks. Hope you like where this went.**

**harvestangel99:**** I'm so sorry, you wrote that you were 'waiting with bated breath', but with the time in between you must have suffocated by now. I am sorry about this! And Sasuke… I've got plans for him. He's such an idiot sometimes. Even if he gets a chance at redemption, he's got to go through remorse first. Thanks so much for reviewing.**

**Ivyhunter10:**** Thanks for reviewing!. You were right in one sense, though. Naruto **_**was**_** hit. I do hope you'll continue reading.**

**kittyhawk09:**** I'm trying desperately to derive MORE fun from writing this story. I am to some extent, but I nearly stressed out from trying to avoid plotholes. Kishi's a lot better than this than I am. Thanks so much for the encouragement.**

**DCMP:**** SORRY. I'm saying that a lot now because I deserve it. ARGH. Thanks for not giving up on this story.**

**Hektols:**** Thanks for your continued encouragement! Don't worry, I've got a plan in place to help Naruto. I'm not going to marginalise him. Look forward to some good old-fashioned Naruto awesome.**

**wolfeclipse25:**** Yeah, and he's going to be back later! Hope you liked it!**

**William de Worde****: Thanks for the notice. Well, the entire point was to make Kakashi sound unhinged, so I suppose it worked. He is going to calm down when the fighting gets rough, though. Sorry about the late update.**

**not the usual baka:**** I was evil to write a cliffhanger and not update for so long, yes. I'M SORRY! Don't kill me!**

**MysteriousEyez:**** Sorry you had to stumble across the story when I was in a spate of plot-holeing. Thanks for your review! It was a good kick in the rear for me to get writing again.**

**ElementKitsune:**** Thanks so much for reviewing! I agree with you about Itachi, there. Naruto has a talent for only nearly getting **_**himself**_** killed, which is both fortunate and unfortunate, really.**

**Rahurata:**** I HAVEN'T THOUGHT THIS OUT CAREFULLY! Thank you so much for reviewing, because you and ElementKitsune and MysteriousEyez were the three later reviewers who got me off my lazy butt watching Star Wars and finishing the plot planning so I could actually WRITE! Apologies for the VERY late update. Thanks so much. I hope you continue liking this.**


	13. It's the Same Rain

**Oh, man. This chapter was so hard to write. But all you Itachi and Sasuke fans out there will love me for it. I don't quite know how to describe this chapter; there's so much in it. I hope you all like it, because I tried so, so hard to make it right.**

**Thank you to all who followed, favourited, and reviewed. Here we go.**

(:~:)

Hinata knows that this is the end.

There is hardly any of her Naruto left in this monstrosity, a furless, skinless kyuubi. Roars rattle her sternum as she scrabbles for a chakra-laced purchase on the demon's head, her screams lost in the wind, her hair a bloodied flag of stained indigo pooling about her shoulders. The trees are dots of emerald far below. Another howl, deafening, agonising. A terrible red eye opens on each side of her, burning crimson with fury, and ochre fox fur grows like a disease on smooth muscle, spreading under her hands. Hinata buries her face in the bristles, gathering what chakra she has left, and chokes, _"Byakugan."_

She has to bite back a scream. The demon-fox below her blazes chakra like a sun, blindingly bright. Solar flares of white, yellow, and scarlet chakra writhe under her palms, towards the heart, a knot of convoluted chakra threads that shudder with each incensed roar shivering from Kyuubi's maw. Despite the tears of pain that run down her veined cheeks, Hinata searches deeper, tearing away layers of turmoil and chaos, down into the Kyuubi's centre until–

An azure star, flickering feebly like a half-snuffed candle, surrounded on all sides by a sea of demonic chakra.

Hinata feels the last of her chakra trickle out of her, and her Byakugan begin to fail. "Naruto-kun," she whispers. "Wake up. Now." No stammer or hesitation. Not this time. As she slips into the grey half-light of the start of unconsciousness, she wonders why the azure star of chakra seems to pulse in answer.

And then here is nothing beneath her.

The slap of the wind in her face shakes Hinata to full awareness, but the arched tilt of the sky and the maddened drumbeat of her heart fling her into a disorientating spin. _So I am to die this way._ Fallen, splintered into an unrecognisable mess, heir of the Hyuga house no more, not pretty like her mother or stern like her father. Or an advocate of change, like the young man so close to her heart.

Hinata collides with something very warm, and most definitely _not_ kyuubi. Something wraps around her, and muffled words crackle past her ear. And suddenly, she realises she there is no rush of wind in her clothes, or angered howls thrumming under her fingers. Instead, her hands are fisted in smooth fabric.

_Orange_ fabric.

Hinata's face flushes a very attractive shade of scarlet as Uzumaki Naruto groans a complaint, arms tightening around her as they slide off the giant toad's belly. She cannot see his eyes, as his hand pushes her head into his collarbone, but she _feels_ rather than hears the rumble of his voice as he wearily chuckles, "All right, Hinata-chan?"

Her heart flutters to new heights. Hinata-_chan,_ he had said.

She manages something like an "Eeep," and fervently hopes that Naruto cannot feel her burning cheeks through his jacket. Hinata slowly nods her head, not daring to reveal her face. She doesn't quite think she can stand on her own.

"Thank you," Naruto says quietly, in a tone completely unlike his usual self. "I heard you calling me. It helped me wake up fast enough to call a toad to catch us."

Hinata ventures a peek out of Naruto's scratched arms, and sure enough, a couple dozen tonnes of warty toad is currently deflating its stomach and righting itself on the splintered ground beside them. A cloud of settling debris and dust obscures the ruin of the forgotten fortress some several hundred metres away.

"That hurt, Naruto," the toad growls, a throaty chortle accompanying his words.

"Sorry, Gama-san!" Naruto replies genially. "I had to think fast."

There is something new to his voice that Hinata has not heard before. It is hard to define, but it could best be described as…_certainty._

Warm hands push her back to arm-length. "Hinata-chan." Naruto's smile is in full, glorious force, a blaze of white teeth and laughter. Yet his cerulean eyes are darker, almost azure in their seriousness. "I need to make sure Sasuke's all right. Can you walk?" he asks gently.

Hinata gives a diminutive nod and turns on a heel, trying to do something, _anything_ to tear her gaze away, and is rather surprised when her knees give out beneath her, sending her sprawling into the dirt. Shame tightens her heart almost to bursting; her breaths come in quick gasps, and she does not need her Byakugan to know she is verging on chakra exhaustion. A cry threatens to claw its way up her throat as every bruise, scrape and cut on her body flares in indignation.

She thinks she hears Naruto laugh once, lighter than she has ever heard him do so before, and then an arm slides under her knees and another around her shoulders. Hinata manages a squeak of indignation as Naruto carries her, stumbling slightly himself, to the edge of the circle of devastation, placing her gently in the dappled shade under a wooden gate.

"Wait here, okay?" Naruto says in his trademark straightforward way, before darting off into the cloud of smoke and fog that still surrounds the ruins of the shattered buildings. Even as he fades into an orange dot in the surrounding dust, frenzied hissing fills the air, and a purple-tinged roar rises to meet it.

But the shade is cool on her flaming cheeks, and the dim light soothing to her tired eyes. Hinata drifts into unconsciousness, chakra and emotional exhaustion overwhelming her.

(:~:)

Sasuke wonders if he is still alive.

Surely he _must_ be; for every inch of him is in agony. It is as if a mountain and a fortress have fallen on top of him – which, when he puts his mind to it, is probably what actually happened. With an effort, he forces open his eyes.

And bites back a scream.

He sees _nothing._ All that constitutes his vision is a field of endless black, formless, directionless. There is not even a sliver of light, a thin ray of hope, nothing to cling onto like a drowning man. For a Uchiha, death is preferable to blindness. The sharingan is the pride of clan, the light that illuminates their shinobis' paths. If Sasuke is blind… then he has failed his parents, his cousins, the rotting corpses of his clan buried in a memorial back in Konoha. He is _dishonoured._ Panicked, Sasuke's breath comes in a rapid sawing, and his hands scrabble on rock. _I'm blind! Itachi took my eyes–_

But his eyes do not pain him.

It is only when his fists make bruising impact with rock over his head does Sasuke realise he is enclosed in rubble. A shaking hand to his eyelids finds them smooth, albeit wet with unbidden tears. There is no scent of blood in his nose, either; only a musty smell of mud.

So he is not blind, then. Only buried alive.

A rasping laugh escapes him. Oh, the irony. The Kyuubi must have distracted Itachi enough to break his genjutsu. With a wince, Sasuke checks his chakra levels. Very nearly none left. _That leaves…_

Gritting his teeth, Sasuke feels the nauseating, inky tendrils spread across his skin as his cursed seal activates. No matter how many times he has used it before, the intoxicating rush of power is almost overwhelmed by his disgust at Orochimaru's chakra rushing through his veins. _Almost,_ but not quite – already, he added force to his pushes shifts the rubble around him, revealing a promising hint of fresh air as he struggles to break free–

And Orochimaru's sly, papery voice hisses in the recesses of his mind. _"I can give you power, Sasuke… release my power, and I shall give you victory!"_

The words reverberate between Sasuke's ears, sending spikes of agony through his skull and _torture_ into the spidery web of his cursed seal. Orochimaru sweeps through his mind like a vile wave of filthy chakra, molding, _changing._ Frantic thoughts explode like stars in his consciousness. He must have overloaded his own chakra, giving Orochimaru's chakra a chance to take over.

Already, the insidious tentacles of snake-like energy are binding to his chakra coils, turning his skin to snake-scales and blood to slime. Dimly, he is aware of a strangled hissing emanating from nine separate throats, and above all, a low, cold voice, snarling his victorious rebirth. _Orochimaru._

"…_now I can take over this child's body and–"_

Sudden, sharp pain. A good pain. A clean pain. Sasuke howls with release as Orochimaru's chakra bleeds out of his cursed seal like a disease from his bones, carving raw, stinging nerves of agony on the way, but leaving him pure and untainted. Light and heat rushes in on him like the clean air into his lungs, and Sasuke gasps in a breath, his eyes snapping open to wide skies and rough rock beneath his back.

Confusion causes him to pause as he stares at Itachi, who stands, imperious as ever, surrounded by the glowing violet ribcage of some unknown monster. Sasuke's sharingan has long flickered out.

"Susano'o. The last jutsu of the Mangekyo Sharingan," Itachi comments drily, by way of explanation. "The Totsuka blade removed Orochimaru. He was a distraction." His eyes are bloodshot. Is it Sasuke's imagination, or does Itachi seem _weary?_

His silent question is answered when Itachi wordlessly doubles over, heaving, as blood drips from between his lips and into his fingers. Sasuke's trembling hand picks a kunai from his weapons pouch – wincing as the movement causes the mass of scrapes on his chest to scream in protest – and readies two exploding tags. _This is the moment. Do not waste it._

Sasuke levels his pure, black gaze at his bloodied older brother, hardens his heart, and the kunai whispers death as it leaves his fingers.

(:~:)

Naruto snarls a groan as he stumbles yet again, a mere hundred metres from Itachi and Sasuke. He supposes he should be awed or amazed at the nine enormous snakes that grew out of Sasuke, or the purple-skeleton-armour-thingy around Itachi. But the Naruto has seen so much in last twenty-four hours that when a revived Orochimaru melts into Itachi's totsuka blade, he only has the energy to feel slightly disgusted.

His chakra reserves are at an all-time low, and the Kyuubi would not help him, in any case. As it is, if he continues moving at the rate he can manage, there is likely going to be nothing left of either Sasuke or his brother but a smear. Already, explosions hammer against Itachi's advancing, imperturbable armour, useless, vain attempts, Sasuke's overwhelming fear evident in the increasing sloppiness of his attacks.

Naruto opens his mouth, but no words come out. His instep catches on a rock, and the world tilts on its axis as he ground rushes up to meet him–

And his face lands in a mess of spiky silver hair.

Kakashi laughs gently as he crouches and manoeuvres Naruto to the ground, motioning at Sakura, who rushes over, hands already glowing with healing chakra. Shikamaru and Yamato slide to a halt a few feet away, Yamato's face visibly relieved to see Naruto normal.

Naruto cracks open an eye and smiles ruefully at his sensei. "Kakashi-sensei…" he mutters. "You're not a kid anymore, huh." It is more a statement than a question. Exhaustion overwhelms surprise, giving everything a crystalline clear quality.

Kakashi's mask wrinkles as he grins. "Neither are you, Naruto."

A dry cough. "But you were, like, a _baby–"_

"Excuse my interruption," Shikamaru cuts in shortly, "But shouldn't we do something about _that?"_ One lazy wave gestures at the carnage a short distance away. Sakura halts in her medical examination and cries out as her gaze focuses on a certain raven-haired figure.

"Ideas, fukutaichou?" Kakashi sighs.

Shikamaru glances quickly at each of their team members in turn, then at Itachi's steamroller Susano'o. "I'm all out," he admits quietly, sounding disappointed with himself. "There's nothing we can do, Sakura."

Yamato neatly steps forward and snags Sakura's arm, stopping her from breaking into a blind run. "You'll die. Don't be stupid." Instinctively, his voice had dropped into ANBU taichou mode, and that in itself is enough to freeze the girl where she stands. Her tears drip silently onto the ground.

Naruto's voice, however, is not so easily contained. "Yamato-taichou, you've got to _do_ something!" he shouts, panicked. "Tsunade no ba-chan sent you after us, didn't she? If you can stop me, you can stop _that_!"

Yamato shakes his head, his mouth drawn tight in a thin line.

Kakashi watches Susano'o's progress with the detached, vague gaze of the extremely analytical mind, his sharingan whirring. Nevertheless, a glimmer of childish glee flickers in his eye. "Shikamaru," he calls nonchalantly.

Shikamaru's head turns slightly towards the silver-haired jounin, understanding and disbelief sparking in his gaze. "No. That's a wild card," he states, matter-of-factly. "It _could_ cause Itachi to overtly reveal his hidden motives, yes. But the chances of it backfiring–"

"Don't know unless we try," Kakashi throws back, chuckling softly. The three others stare between them in incomprehension.

"Very well. But if the jutsu fails, I don't want be the one to explain to the Godaime how we scraped bits of her favourite jonin off the dirt," Shikamaru says vehemently. There is a hidden warning to be careful there, and guilt, too – it is too soon since _Asuma_.

Kakashi's silver hair glints in the sunlight as he nods, understanding. "Stand back, everyone," he calls cheerily, but Yamato is pinned with a dark stare, one that conveys volumes for an ANBU operative.

Naruto and Sakura shout in protest as wooden strips rise out of the ground, immobilising them. Shikamaru remains free, though he stares ahead with a vacant, detached expression, hands jammed in his pockets.

"Shikamaru–" Naruto yells.

"_Shut it._" Shikamaru's words come out nearly a snarl, shocking Naruto to silence. There is bitterness in that tone, and barely reined-in anger. "Watch your sensei."

Naruto does as he is told, a vague feeling of unease stirring in his stomach.

(:~:)

Kakashi reaches Itachi and Sasuke just as Itachi's armour begins to fluctuate slightly. Neither of the brothers even turn towards him, but they are so focussed on one another that Kakashi doubts if they even notice his presence. His sharingan whirls, taking in Itachi's chakra reserves. Barely enough. The jutsu he has in mind feeds primarily on the opponent's chakra, but should it empty, both Itachi and Kakashi would be drained dry of chakra like a lemon of its juice.

Not a pleasant way to go.

Closing his normal eye, Kakashi takes a breath, and centres himself. His mind is wiped blank, exhaustion, pain and worry quashed under mental barriers of tempered steel. He focuses all his energy on a single memory, and as the black-and-white images surface, he allows the last of his chakra to gather in his heart like a torrent of ice and flow down his arms to his fingers.

Handseals, one after the other. Boar. Ram. Snake. Monkey. Ram. Boar…

His fingers fly faster, ignoring the protest in his wrists, muscle memory and pure determination making up for his fatigued mind. The seals are stamped like luminous crystals across his memory, a dance to the hidden melody of his memories, laced with scarlet pain from his sharingan. He will not make a mistake. He is Kakashi of the sharingan.

The moment of completion rings in his mind like a sonorous bell, tolling death, new life, a sliver of hope.

Kakashi sharingan catches the tiniest of gaps in Itachi's Susano'o, and his last jutsu lances joyfully from his fingers as a pure white bar of shining light. A whisper. The jutsu that changed him, saved him, and might save his student now.

"_Chibi no jutsu."_

(:~:)

Sasuke can't help himself. He cries out, temporarily blinded, as Susano'o's dying fragments fling him backwards into a broken wall. Dazed, he glances upwards to find the familiar image of his family crest etched into the wall, a paper fan immortalised in rock. Blearily, he casts his eyes down again, towards Itachi, who undoubtedly is readying his last, final blow–

But the blow is not forthcoming.

Sasuke tilts his head again, his vision focusing on a tiny figure kneeling in the clearing dust…

And Itachi stares right back at him, huge, dark eyes holding no trace of the dreaded mangekyo sharingan as he totters forward on small feet, his two-foot-tall frame wavering uncertainly as he stares at his, ironically, _little_ brother.

"Nii-san?" The words slip out of Sasuke's cracked lips before he can stop them, years of disuse weighing the word with horror, hate, confusion. Dimly, he notices Kakashi doubled over on the side, gasping for breath.

"Sasu?" Itachi lisps, blinking uncertainly. His miniaturised Akatsuki robe and clothing threatens to swamp him. Undiluted joy spreads on his features, and uncaring that dried blood still cakes his chin, the little boy tumbles forward, reaching for Sasuke with a hungry light in his eyes.

Reflexively, Sasuke palms a chakra wire and trips up the small body, his heart giving a betraying skip as Itachi sprawls face-first into the dust. A wild laugh gouges at Sasuke's throat; had madness truly descended upon him this quickly? _What genjutsu is this?_ But for all his efforts to dispel the illusion, Itachi remains a tiny toddler, struggling to pick himself up from the torn ground.

"Sasuke…" Kakashi's gasp snaps Sasuke's head towards him. "You don't have to take revenge. There's more to Itachi than meets the eye."

His confusion warps into anger. _"AND WHAT IS THERE?!"_ he screams at his former sensei. "He killed my entire clan!" Sasuke's words are hardly more than sobs now, accusations more to convince himself than anyone else. "What can possibly make up for that? He took my _childhood_ from me!" The last line is but a scream, hurled in desperate fear and hate to the world in general.

Kakashi is closer now, having staggered over. "I don't know," he confesses, exhaustion slurring his words. "But he saved my life, and Naruto's. He made me promise to care for you after you killed him."

"What?" The word is faint, loaded with too many emotions. _"Why…?"_

Kakashi's hand reaches for Sasuke's bruised shoulder. "Sasuke, let us help y–"

A solid kick lands in Kakashi's stomach, sending him reeling back several paces. His gaze refocuses on Sasuke, to find that the young man has not moved a single inch. Instead, Sasuke's dark eyes are fixed about two feet of the ground, staring with a mixture of revulsion and fear at the instigator.

Itachi lands waveringly back on his tiny feet, his arms flung out beside him as he stands between Kakashi and Sasuke. "No hurt Sasu!" he shrieks, breaking off into coughs that rack his entire miniscule frame. New blood splatters the ground. A child's blood.

Kakashi's not quite sure whether the world has decided to go on a hallucinogen-tripping session with him and Sasuke.

As it is, Sasuke's expression twists, and he falls back onto hatred, his only steady companion in sixteen years' worth of life. His chokuto reappears in his hand, the blade resting easily, all too easily, on the neck of the child before him.

Itachi starts, trembling slightly, as the cold, blood-soaked blade touches his skin, and he turns to face Sasuke with a pleading, uncomprehending gaze. "Sasu?" he whispers uncertainly. "Bro-ther?" A line of new crimson runs from one corner of his mouth, dripping down his chin.

Sasuke's grip is white-knuckled on his chokuto's hilt, his skin bleached whiter than the hilt itself. The metal shivers with his trembling hand. "You betrayed the clan," he growls, falling back to recitation, passing judgement, _rightful_ judgement, as the last of the Uchiha. "Look at this!" he shouts, ignoring how the child jumps back slightly, his wide, innocent eyes fixing on the etched Uchiha fan in the rock wall behind them. "Recognise it?" Sasuke spits. "That's my family. _Our_ family. Did you ever pause to think about mother and father before you murdered them? Did the children _scream?_" A sudden thought occurs to him, and he barks a laugh. "Never mind. Don't tell me. You showed me. I _saw._" Sasuke draws out the word, lacing it with roiling madness.

Itachi falls to his knees, wide eyes open with horror, clutching his head as vague shouts and metallic blood rises to the surface of his hazy memories. "I know!" he yells, his voice breaking off in a squeak. "Mama and Papa tol' me it was okay!" Tears start to drip from the corners of his eyes. "I _had_ to," he snuffles. "To pro...protec' you."

"Stop playing with me!" Sasuke's derisive scream slams Itachi's mouth shut with the force of a slap. "You're not an innocent child! You never were!" He forces his hands to still the chokuto blade.

Kakashi straightens a short distance away, leaning heavily on a piece of rubble. "Then kill him, Sasuke," he says plainly, pinning him with a steely stare. "You know you want to."

Itachi looks imploringly up at him, crimson still staining his clothes. There is no hope in those once-young eyes anymore. Sasuke swallows, wondering at the horrible familiarity of all this, at the needling self-loathing that rises like an ugly dragon in his heart. Spite causes unthinking words to rise to his lips, ones he himself heard a lifetime ago:_ "You're not worth killing!"_

Itachi screams. A child's scream.

A gasp. The world flashes black and white. In a seemingly detached manner, Sasuke sees this scene for what it really is.

For on terrible moment, the ground turns to the paved roads of the Uchiha compound, the full moon glows yellow like a hangman's noose in the suddenly starless sable sky, and Sasuke is the one staring uncomprehendingly up at his older brother, watching the crimson blood of a hundred family members drip off the end of Itachi's katana. The pure adoration of a younger brother had warred with his disbelief and horror, sending Sasuke's eight-year-old body into shock. He loved his older brother. That his idol and role model would do such a thing was unthinkable, inconceivable.

And amid all that chaos, there had not been a shred of doubt in his heart that Itachi would kill him.

And now, eight years later, the exact same moment.

Except that now, their roles are reversed.

Sasuke was about to kill a child.

His chokuto clatters heavily as it falls to the ground, and he hears someone scream, a shattering howl of realisation, as his knees hit rough concrete a moment later. The scream draws out in a terrible, high shriek. It does not sound human… but he thinks it might be himself.

By searching for revenge, Sasuke has become the very monster he wished to defeat.

_He has turned into Itachi._

Had Sasuke not spent eight years chasing the shadow of his brother, trying to scale that impossible wall, in order to avenge his clan? His life was a singular quest for justice. With Itachi's death, Sasuke would emerge the _righteous_ victor.

Sasuke was _morally superior_ to Itachi_._ He had always been.

Was he?

Sasuke is hardly aware of his dimming vision anymore, or of the crimson trails his torn fingers rake into the concrete. Had he really fallen so far in his quest to kill his own brother that he is now no different from him?

But through the roaring of blood in Sasuke's ears, the shredding of his nerves as his very identity is rent asunder, Itachi the child speaks, barely three feet in front of him.

A childish lisp. "Kill me."

"What?" Sasuke is gasping hollowly now, wheezing. His knees tremble underneath his weight, and his gaze flickers to where Itachi smiles sadly at him.

_Smiling._

The black-haired toddler's expression holds a terrible _acceptance, _an emotion that should never have appeared on any child's face. But it did. On an eight-year-old Sasuke, and now a two-year-old Itachi.

The lines on Itachi's face have never looked more out of place. Slowly, he reaches up, two fingers pointing straight at Sasuke's forehead. Although their eyes are at a similar level, as Sasuke is on his knees, Itachi's fingers still have to reach up slightly. The syllables fall out of his mouth like gems. "Go-me-ne, Sasuke."

Sasuke scrambles backwards on his rear, eyes wide and horrified. "No," he whispers, shocked to hear the age in his own voice, so corrupted and vile compared to the Itachi's clear tones. He doesn't know what he is denying any more – the act of killing, or his own dark self. He shakes his head violently. "No."

Still Itachi totters forward, crimson smile unsullied, sweet. As Sasuke finds a solid stone wall at his back, Itachi closes his eyes in a choked laugh. "I'm gonna go see mama and papa now," he declares. "Stay safe, lil' brother."

Kakashi stirs, eye narrowing as he continues to observe the scene.

Sasuke scrabbles backwards at the commanding Uchiha symbol painted in grey on the wall behind him, raises his tear-filled gaze to meet his brother's, and screams, "No! _I won't kill you! _It's wrong!_ I'm _wrong!"

Itachi pauses, fingers an inch from Sasuke's forehead, something unknown passing across his tiny face.

And then Kakashi is there, pulling Itachi back, gently binding his small wrists and ankles with wire, calling out to Sakura for medical help

Sasuke watches his older brother fall into unconsciousness, knowing he should _want_ him dead, but when he searches for the hate with which to see it done, he finds none directed at Itachi.

All of Sasuke's hate leads to himself.

The heavens open their floodgates, and rain lashes down upon them, washing away eight years' worth of blood, anger, and wasted youth. The hidden sun waters the forest with its tears. Kakashi glances up a the sky, and chuckles, _"It's the same rain."_

As the comforting folds of oblivion claim Sasuke, he feels the water run silvery cool upon his chest, and wonders why Kakashi-sensei is eye-smiling at him.

(:~:)

**There's roughly two chapters left to tie things up after this. Itachi's secret isn't fully out, after all. Did you all like that? The emotion was REALLY difficult to get right. I was terrified I'd make a mistake. Tell me what you think of Chibi Itachi… he's not your average bundle of joy. See you all next time!**


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